In a continuation from yesterday’s posting about the relationship between Saddam’s Ba’atist Iraq and Osama’s Islamist Al-Qaida, I came across Ed Morrissey’s posting at his Captains Quarter’s blogspot on the very same issue. Ed reports that:
“For those who keep insisting that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein had no operational ties, the work of Ray Robison has provided explicit evidence in rebuttal. Fox News reports on the latest efforts of Robison in translating the documents captured by US forces but never translated by the CIA or Pentagon. His recent translation of a series of documents shows that AQ jihadists had negotiated with the Iraqi Intelligence Services for training facilities in Tajikistan or in Baghdad:”
[Newly declassified documents captured by U.S. forces indicate that Saddam Hussein’s inner circle not only actively reached out to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and terror-based jihadists in the region, but also hosted discussions with a known Al Qaeda operative about creating jihad training “centers,” possibly in Baghdad. Ray Robison, a former member of the CIA-directed Iraq Survey Group (ISG), supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit the hundreds of captured documents and materials of Saddam’s regime.]
I believe what’s even more staggering, is the video clip found by Morrissey of an ABC report from 1999 (during the Clinton administration) that speaks of the very same connections between Saddam and Osama, now being found from recently translated documents captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The blogosphere is persistently and consistantly staying ahead of the main stream media in these matters of great importance, who appear no longer interested in their own important ‘ground breaking’ findings.
This is of course ‘pure conjecture’ on my part, but maybe if it was a Democrat in the Oval office, the MSM would be more eager to report the relevations from these captured documents, instead of completely ignoring them. In light of ABC’s highly accurate reporting from 1999, you would think that the editors at ABC would be thrilled if not delighted that an old report by their news agency was validated by the recently translated documents. Their indifference forces me then to conclude that my ‘conjecture’,… is not soo far off the mark. KGS
