This Iraq thing

That's how Harold Ford, Jr. characterized Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) in his parking lot mugging of Bob Corker's press conference Friday. No surprise there--the Iraq thing is the enigma of our time.

This is a long post only because there's just no short way to convey thoughts on a topic that's literally divided the entire world and turned yet another election into a referendum. Getting to the heart of the matter takes awhile, so here goes nothing.

What to do. It's a legitimate question to ask, "why can't we leave if there were no WMDs and no link to al Qaeda? Just admit the mistake and move on." The administration's well-rehearsed reply is sound, ie., it would embolden the enemy, but we're left high and dry on whether the original casus belli still applies. Was the mission a mistake?

Such a disconnect has led many rational Americans down a variety of wildly conspiratorial bunny trails, among those even Pat Tillman's brother. His essay is full of incredible charges on par with the leftiest loons on record. That certainly plays well for our enemies, who at last check still wanted everyone dead or wearing a keffyah.

Fact is, the divisiveness present has largely been a product of OIF, not the GWoT. Those like Tillman who've served over there cannot be easily dismissed as unhinged moonbats even if they sound like Dean. They've seen more than most.

But despite those emotions the book on Saddam cannot be closed, no matter how much the left desires it. Unanswered questions still persist--was he a threat to America or the region? What happened to his WMDs? Was he connected to AQ? An affirmative answer to any of those would clearly justify an invasion post 9/11. That doesn't mean Bush/Rumsfeld should not be held accountable for post-war screwups, it just means they didn't lie and the cause was just. Evidence does suggest contacts.

However, evidence and public perception are not always the same. Ask someone on the street and they're likely to say there weren't any connections--ever. For that we can largely thank a relentless pack of left-leaning journalists, most of whom voted for Gore and Kerry and who are now flooding the circuits with as many anti-Bush stories as humanly possible in an effort to influence the election. One of the primary rhetorical vehicles has been the 'secularists don't play well with Islamists' paradigm, which has become urban legend despite post facto evidence to the contrary. At least they're consistent.

Let me stop and say that Saddam may well be innocent of all ties to AQ. But for the sake of argument let's for a moment pretend he's not. If he wanted to use Islamic proxies to do his bidding, how would he do it?

First, everyone knows his hands were tied in the 90s due to sanctions, resolutions, pesky weapons inspectors, etc, including a CIA coup attempt and daily fighter missions in the no-fly zones. Second, a contributing factor working in his favor was a general sense that he'd been defeated, rendered harmless and placed in a box. "It's the economy, stupid" was the head-in-sand buzz phrase of the 90s, a sentiment not echoed in Baghdad.

Had he desired a revenge attack it obviously wouldn't have come via ordering the Hammarabi Division to land on Jones Beach. One way was through "individual Arabs", to which he had alluded during the Gulf War. AQ seems to fit that description rather nicely, doesn't it? We know Saddam had become aware of bin Laden's movement in the early 90s due to the verified trip to Khartoum by an Iraqi regime member.

It's conceivable that in return Saddam could offer the proxies future access to certain substances they could only dream about. There's only so much one can do inside a cave.

Yes, it's probably true they didn't trust each other or even like each other but that in itself doesn't automatically become a deal breaker. Both the Axis and Allied powers in World War II didn't necessarily like or trust each other either, yet they banded together to fight the common enemy. Besides, surely if there was an agreement they'd need a cover story and the secular vs religious paradigm would provide a plausible distance.

Evidence suggests that things changed in the mid 90s after their reported meetings. After bin Laden was expelled from Saudi and Sudan he was fast running out of safe harbor options, but if the two were in bed the last place he'd run would have been Iraq. That didn't mean he couldn't express sympathy from afar, though.

The 9/11 Commission report discussed the connection issue, now ancient history, but they also dropped a few names in the process, specifically Iraqi natives operating on behalf of AQ in North America and around the world.

The most famous two names were Abu Hajer al Iraqi and Wadi al-Hage, both of whom have been covered in a number of articles. A third more nebulous figure was Mubarak al-Duri, another Iraqi whom the 9/11 folks called "bin Laden's WMD procurement" person. Sounds like a pretty significant figure, right?

Al-Duri operated in Arizona from the late 80s through the mid 90s, then disappeared to Canada other locales before apparently settling in the Sudan around the time of 9/11. State Department envoy Barbara Bodine once called Sudan a "Holiday Inn for terrorists", however after the attacks they began cooperating in earnest, which included rounding up some unusual suspects for interrogation.

Oddly, the 9/11 report doesn't tell us that al-Duri was part of that round up. Here's an account from an alleged interview conducted by the FBI somewhere around 2001:

Another person interrogated was Mubarak Douri, an Iraqi who was regarded as part of Bin Laden's business infrastructure. Cloonan said Douri and a second Iraqi laughed when he pressed them about possible Bin Laden ties to Saddam Hussein's regime. "They said Bin Laden hated Saddam," the retired FBI investigator recalled. Bin Laden considered Hussein "a Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate," the Iraqis told the former federal agent.

That last sentence certainly makes a liberal's heart go pitter-pat, but keep in mind the spiritual leader of Sudan in the 90s was Hassan al-Turabi, who was actively trying to bring together the Sunni-Shia factions in an effort to bolster their team against the great Satans. Here's what the 9/11 report said about Turabi and Iraq:

To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam.

Wonder what the terms of the agreement were?

For all we know al-Duri (we still don't know if he's related to Izzat, Saddam's former number two man) was telling the truth. His nationality alone doesn't make him a Mukhabarat agent, but it doesn't mean he wasn't one, either. Since the above information was gleaned from an FBI interrogation we presume he was not subjected to any 'harsh methods'.

We could easily wander off into a lengthy sidebar about the FBI's role here, such as how they knew about al-Duri and his whereabouts so quickly after 9/11, which suggests they were aware of him before 9/11, but this post is long enough. Suffice to say any targets even remotely associated with Hani Hanjour could cause embarrasment in light of the famous email that never got to HQ.

We're left to believe the FBI took his "bin Laden hates Saddam" testimony at face value much in the same manner the Senate Intelligence Committee took the testimonies of Saddam and Tariq Aziz in their Phase II report, as if these people were incapable of lying. As if.

I suppose that begs a final question--why didn't the FBI pick up al-Duri in 2001 if he was, as the 9/11 report stated two years later, bin Laden's 'WMD procurement agent'? Was he cleared during the interrogation, and if so, why did the 9/11 report bother mentioning him at all? There's a lot about this stuff I don't pretend to know, but it would seem only common sense to get him off the streets.

All of the above goes toward a scenario where Saddam's role in AQ is being intentionally kept under wraps for whatever reasons. The fact he's still alive might tell us something, especially since we're beginning to get hints that America is willing to negotiate with the insurgency, but only with a certain flavor:

“I am sure that there has been contacts between us and people linked with Baathists (the party of ousted president Saddam Hussein) to a certain extent,” Fernandez said.

So long as the above irregularities and others (the ubiquitous cases of Abdul Yasin, Rayed Mohammad Abdullah Ali, or even Abu Nidal) remain cloudy "this Iraq thing" will never be entirely solved to everyone's satisfaction. At least not before November 7th.

VERBOSITY CENTRAL 10/22/06

Dilbert's Scott Adams thinks he's cracked this enigma. He used a lot of words, too. I found these to be of particular interest:

1. Announce the pullout on the same day that Saddam Hussein (presumably) gets executed.

Interesting, the first verdict comes down November 5.

It's not absurd to think some top GOP movershakers might be whispering in Bush's ear to declare victory and chopper out. Perhaps they're concerned about the dems getting Congress then dragging out a withdrawal to their own benefit right before the next election.

Anyway, meetings with Sunni troublemakers have apparently taken place in Jordan while back here the press is keying on Bush's meetings with his Generals. Add to that Maliki's recent photo-op with al-Sadr and Sistani and it should leave little doubt that something is in the wind.