The subway attack and Saddam

This weekend's Time magazine article about the scrubbed al-Qaeda hydrogen cynanide attack on the New York subway system will certainly fan the flames in conspiracy world. Consider this my small contribution of butane.

According to the story:

Ali revealed that Ayeri had visited Ayman Zawahiri in January 2003, to inform him of a plot to attack the New York City subway system using cyanide gas. Several mubtakkars were to be placed in subway cars and other strategic locations. This was not simply a proposal; the plot was well under way. In fact, zero-hour was only 45 days away.

The time line is very important. Let's presume al-Ayeri's trip to meet Zawahiri (was bin Laden too tied up?) was in late January 2003. Add a 45 day countdown and we're squarely in the middle of March 2003, when the Iraq invasion was to began. How would AQ know when our attack might start?

Well, they might have guessed it based on open-source info, but keep this in mind -- according to the Joint Forces report the Russians had a mole at CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar, who was relaying our attack plans to Baghdad. Putin denied it, Condi Rice expressed shock and disgust, then the whole thing quickly went away. Another ongoing story in January was Hans Blix's failure to find any WMDs.

We're learning that Saddam's gameplan for defending Iraq was to deny WMD while privately preparing for a Vietnam-style insurgency using Islamic proxies/guerrila fighters. An attack on New York timed with our invasion might have easily backfired and pulled together an already partially divided nation fully behind the war effort. Coordination between all the interested parties would seem a must.

Like many other documents and stories, this one doesn't provide a smoking gun of such Saddam-AQ coordination, only more circumstantial evidence towards that end.

AYE, CAP'N 6/18/06

Ed Morrisey has more insight and links. By the way, here's wishing him a speedy recovery.

DOT CONNECTING 6/18/06

Texas Rainmaker has a good summary of some of the dots linking Saddam with terrorist groups, not all of them recently discovered:

Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.

Keeping Sudan and al-Shifa in mind, here's another speculative dot:

Mubarak al Duri (who is referred to as Mubarak Douri in the report's text and Mubarak al Duri in a footnote), reportedly bin Laden's principal procurement agent for weapons of mass destruction. Though he is referred to as such, no details on what he did for bin Laden or when he lived here were revealed.

And,

There was Mubarak al-Duri, an Iraqi native living in Arizona, who officials say worked with bin Laden's firms in Sudan

A straw grasp or connected dot? Perhaps if we could find folks like Mr. al-Duri and Abdul Yasin, we'd have a better idea.

NO FLY ZONE 6/21/06

Speaking of Mr. al-Duri, he spent time in Arizona as did Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, who apparently knew Hani Hanjour. Ali was recently arrested in New Zealand and extradicted to Saudi Arabia--supposedly--but has now disappeared.

Two speculative possibilities spring to mind. One, SA let him go because they were threatened by bin Laden, or two, he never made it to Saudi because he's now spending time at one of our luxurious secret detainment facilities. Right now I'm leaning towards one, but not by much.