The (lack of a) Al Qaeda-Saddam Connection

More email exchanges between Stewart and I…

(Mike) I also think the claims about a Saddam-Al Qaeda link were nonsense, and if anything Iraq is a much more fertile breeding ground for terrorists now than it ever was under Saddam.

(Stewart) Disagree with the first, agree with the second parts of this. I’m a ‘real-politk’ sort of guy and I think that part of Iraq was to foment this exact sit. Get the terrorists focused on the free-fire zone of Iraq and thus distract them from other targets. This is not single solution, but it is a spreading effect. Just a hunch…

(Mike) In regard to the Al-Qaeda-Saddam connection, below is an extended excerpt from page 48 of the Carnegie Endowment’s report WMD IN IRAQ: Evidence and Implications. In regard to the argument that Iraq is now serving as a “sponge,” absorbing terrorist activity that otherwise might happen elsewhere: I find fault in that argument for a number of reasons. First, it presumes some relatively fixed number of terrorists, all with a single-minded approach. Second, if you’re actually arguing that the US wants foreign terrorists to pour into Iraq, then why has there been so much concern about protecting the border? Third, don’t you worry that all this in-the-field training for terrorists in Iraq, rather than having a concentrating effect, might instead facilitate the spread of battle-hardened terrorist cells to neighboring countries? And fourth, urban environments are the preferred environment for terrorists, as it provides maximum cover for them and maximizes civilian casualties. Saying that your solution for terrorism is to deliberately seek out battles in this environment hardly seems like a kind thing to do for the innocent Iraqis we say we’re liberating. In my opinion, this sponge/flypaper theory makes simplistic and unrealistic assumptions about the goals and sophistication of the multi-faceted terrorist elements now in Iraq and neighboring countries.

Was there reason to believe that Saddam Hussein would turn over unconventional weapons or WMD capability to Al Qaeda or other terrorists?

The president presented this possibility as the ultimate danger and the centerpiece of his case for war. The most strongly worded of many such warnings came in the 2003 State of the Union speech: “Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans—this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.” In fact, however, there was no positive evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD or agents to terrorist groups and much evidence to counter it.

Bin Laden and Saddam were known to detest and fear each other, the one for his radical religious beliefs and the other for his aggressively secular rule and persecution of Islamists. Bin Laden labeled the Iraqi ruler an infi del and an apostate, had offered to go to battle against him after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and had frequently called for his overthrow.119 The fact that they were strategic adversaries does not rule out a tactical alliance based on a common antagonism to the United States. However, although there have been periodic meetings between Iraqi and Al Qaeda agents, and visits by Al Qaeda agents to Baghdad, the most intensive searching over the last two years has produced no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between
Saddam’s government and Al Qaeda.

There were more than words for guidance. Terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna has pointed out that the Iraqi regime had a long history of sponsoring terrorism against Israel, Kuwait, and Iran, providing money and weapons to these groups. Yet over many
years Saddam did not transfer chemical, biological, or radiological materials or weapons to any of them “probably because he knew that they could one day be used against his secular regime.”

In the judgment of U.S. intelligence, a transfer of WMD by Saddam to terrorists was likely only if he were “sufficiently desperate” in the face of an impending invasion. Even then, the NIE concluded, he would likely use his own operatives before terrorists.

Even without the particular relationship between Saddam and bin Laden, the notion that any government would turn over its principal security assets to people it could not control is highly dubious. States have multiple interests and land, people, and resources to protect. They have a future. Governments that made such a transfer would put themselves at the mercy of groups that have none of these. Terrorists would not even have to use the weapons but merely allow the transfer to become known to U.S. intelligence to call down the full wrath of the United States on the donor state, thereby opening opportunities for themselves. Moreover, governments with the wherewithal to have acquired such weapons and the ambition to want them used are likely to have their own means of delivering them—through people who take orders. In the 1993 assassination attempt on former president George H. W. Bush, for example, Saddam relied on his own intelligence operatives. All in all, governments
would have little to gain and perhaps everything to lose by giving their WMD to terrorists.