On this anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I offer this, the 3rd installment of a summary of the IDA report on Saddam and terrorism. Part 1 is here... and part 2 is here...
I joked in Part 1 that I read the report, so you don't have to, but..
No, actually you should read this report. You can find it here... on the right-hand side(big pdf!)
I think you should read it because anything the current administration doesn't want you to easily access must be GOOD stuff. I mean, they canceled a press conference about the release of the report so as to avoid being asked questions about it. So read it-- get informed about what is in this report and perhaps more importantly, what is NOT in this report. Then ask questions... ask Congressmen what they think of the report...ask journalists to ask questions of administration officials...keep asking.
The title of the paper is Iraqi Perspectives Project (Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents), Volume 1, and it was originally published in January 2007 by the Joint Advanced Warfighting Program, part of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA). The authors were asked by the Pentagon to redact material from the report at that time, and the new version was published in November of 2007. This is the version that was just (sort of) released to the public. Its reported purpose:
Volume 1 examines the relationships between the regime of Saddam Hussein and terrorism in its local, regional, and global context (vii).
What follows is a summary of the third main part of the paper: Iraq and Terrorism: Three Cases
Case 1: Abu al-Abbas
Abu al-Abbas was a Palestinian Liberation Front leader who lived in Iraq under Saddam's protection. He fled to Iraq to avoid the five lifeterms he had been given in Italy for his role in the 1985 hijacking of the cruise liner Achille Lauro and the murder of a United States citizen during the hijacking. He and his wife were provided Iraqi diplomatic passports so they could move freely within the Middle East.
In the 1990's, Abbas traveled often to Gaza and reported back to Saddam on the various terrorist organizations there. In one note, he wrote to Saddam for help in training Palestinians to infiltrate the Israeli military to "analyze the weak points in the enemy structure so as to select potential targets and our future hits." (p. 28)
He met with the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) in July 1998 to report on Palestinian conditions and express his willingness to work in any way which would serve Iraq. The IIS also reported on operations Abbas' organization had performed in Iraq during the Gulf War.These operations reportedly included burning the Japanese Embassy in the Philippines, burning the American Airlines office in the Philippines, and providing a team to carry out operations in the Saudi territories. (p. 29)
Interestingly, it appears that some of these operations were failures and that either Abbas or the IIS overstated or falsely reported the results of the operations. (pg. 50)
Abu al-Abbas was captured in April 2003 by US forces in Baghdad, and the IDA report says that he died of natural causes on March 9, 2004 while in US custody. (p. 54, note 67)
Case 2. Attacks on Humanitariian Organizations
+ A May 1993 letter to the Iraqi Minister of Defense detailed some of the IIS aimed at the United Nations (UN) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Kurdish areas of Iraq. The letter indicates that terrorist operations in the Kurdish areas were carried out with the direct knowledge of the highest levels of the Iraqi government.(p. 31)
+ The letter describes specific activity from January through May of 1993:
TOP SECRET & PRIVATE
... Since the beginning of the current year until now there have been four
workers from non-governmental organizations killed, (two Kurds, one
Belgian, one Australian), a hospital bombed, and dynamite exploded in
trailers bringing aid to the Kurds. The deteriorating conditions forced the Doctors Without Borders organization to leave the area at the end of April. (p. 31)
+ Further operations were referenced in the letter, 45 against "foreigners" which had been detailed on other letters (these have not been found at this point. (p. 31)
+ Saddam's intelligence service deliberately targeted Western journalists for assassination. A specific instance is detailed in which an IIS agent was instructed to blow up two Swedish journalists in their car with dynamite. Unfortunately, the agent had befriended these journalists earlier, and so he told his brother (an officer in the Kurdish security forces) the plan. The Kurdish security let him blow up the car, but in a way that would only cause the journalists to get hurt. For his trouble the IIS agent was interrogated about what went wrong with the plan, confessed and was sent to Abu Ghraib.
+ Another letter reported a specific strike against American aid workers for the UN. Uday Hussein wrote to his father to describe a February 19, 2001 attack against Land Cruiser carrying four American citizens. "The results of the mission," writes Uday, "were the destruction of the above mentioned vehicle, the death of the head of the organization and the serious injury of the other three, including the woman."
+ Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be associated with al Qaeda-as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's longterm vision. (p. 34) In Part 2, we saw that pan-Arab and pan-Islamic movements were competing for the support of revolutionary organizations.
+ The Army of Muhammad is one such organization, and the IIS spent time monitoring their activities. Those activities included:
• Striking the embassies and other Jewish and American interests anywhere
in the world.
• Striking American embassies and interests unless the Americans pull
out their forces from the Arab lands and discontinue their support for
Israel.
The group was an "offshoot of bin Laden", and later sought Iraqi assistance. The IIS station overseeing this was told to "deal with them in accordance with priorities previously established." We have no idea what those were.
Case 3. Destabilizing Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
+ The Saddam regime had a key objective of executing operations against Saudi Arabia. Specific documents list volunteers for martyr work in that country.
+ The process of recruiting for a particular mission (observing and eliminating important members of the Kuwait royal family --when possible) (p. 38), is detailed. Documents make it clear that agents were placed in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to carry out orders.
+ Operatives were also set up in countries around Iraq "to attack American installations, the ruling families in the Middle East, and oil installations." (p. 40)
+ There is a captured lIS instruction manual, Lessons in Secret Organization and Jihad Work - How to Organize to Overthrow the Saudi Royal Family, compiled in December 2001, which makes it clear what Saddam's intentions were.
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So, in this section, we get more detail on the specifics of Saddam's use of terrorist groups. We get more info on his motives and who he is most interested in attacking. The US interests in the Middle East do show up as targets, but most of his operation seemed to have been focused on other countries in the region. Again, Saddam was not a good man, but nothing in this report supports labeling him as an "imminent threat."
Our government really knew this before March 19, 2003-- they knew he wasn't a threat to us, and yet we are here-- 5 years into an occupation of a country, killing Iraqi citizens who had nothing to do with any harm to the US.
Shameful... and criminal.