Saddam provided terrorists with money, training camps, and weapons says ex-Minister Aziz

This week, the AP has obtained records of the FBI's interrogation of former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz (pictured). According to the notes, Aziz acknowledges that Saddam's Iraq supported terrorists: Saddam provided Islamist terrorists with land with which to raise money (via farming) while also housing a training camp. In addition, Saddam provided them with AK-47 machine guns. While Aziz denied a direct connection with bin Laden, the AP writes:

Aziz acknowledged, however, that the Saddam regime supported other terrorists, including notorious Palestinian militant Abul Abbas, mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship. American passenger Leon Klinghoffer was killed by the terrorists and his body dumped into the Mediterranean. Abbas was captured in Iraq by U.S. forces in April 2003 and died in custody 11 months later.

Aziz said Baghdad gave Abbas a farm to allow him to generate money for the Palestinian cause. "The farm evolved into a camp where Abul Abbas would train fighters with AK-47s" provided by the Iraqi government, Aziz said, according to a summary of his May 6, 2004 interrogation.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of terrorism:
•9-11 in review

•Round-up of left-wing terrorism
•Yet another left-wing terrorist
•Obama's humane plan for terrorists: kill rather than interrogate
•The root cause of terrorism
•Gitmo torture: Metallica is proud of its music's message to terrorists
•Speaker Pelosi's deep thoughts on giving Miranda rights to terrorists.
•AG Eric Holder was for enhanced interrogation before he was against it.
•The NY Times finally admits we were fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq
•Gitmo torture tactic revealed: "she touched my thigh!"
•Terror color codes updated for Obama (illustrated)
•NY Times skeptical of Bush but trusts terrorists
•Global warming predicted to cause more terrorism
•Before Al Qaeda: the socialist-terrorist alliance of the 1980s

Profiles in naiveté

This year, Sen. Dodd was one of the contenders for the Democratic presidential nominations. James Webb writes of Dodd's actions back in 1975:

Then-Congressman Christopher Dodd typified the hopeless naiveté of his peers when he intoned that "calling the Lon Nol regime an ally is to debase the word.... The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now."

Mr. Dodd had his wish and with the result that Pol Pot succeeded in overthrowing Lon Nol and creating the killing fields of Cambodia.

Dodd's logic is very familiar Democratic logic. His claim was that war is caused only by the US. If we "end military aid now" then we can "give peace" to Cambodia. Dodd seems to have given no more thought to how Pol Pot would react to such a "gift" in 1975 than Sen Obama has given to how bin Laden will respond to such a "gift" in Iraq in 2009.

On possible explanation for this thought process is denial. The New York Times reports that this is the process used by Sen. Clinton. The Times quotes Judith Hope, a friend and informal adviser to Mrs. Clinton, and a former chairwoman of the New York State Democratic Party who says:

. "When she's on the road and someone has a negative news story, she says, 'I don't want to hear it; I don't need to hear it.' I think she wants to protect herself from that and stay focused."

Denial may be mal-adaptive but it certainly can help one stay focused and confident.

Hat tip: BotW.

MSM v. Iraq: update

The MSM is not yet discussing the main point of Gov. Sanchez' recent speech but the Washington Post is admitting that the good news from Iraq is becoming "hard to dispute." More here.

More than one way to legislate defeat

During World War I, 1.5 million Armenians died in Turkey while being relocated. Turkey says that the tragedy was due to war-time shortages. Turkey adamantly rejects claims that the deaths were deliberate. In fact, anyone in Turkey making such claims is prosecuted. Now, the Democrats in the House are debating a resolution that declares the deaths to be "genocide." Why bring this up now, almost a century later? CNN provides the answer:

The Pentagon says 70 percent of the military's cargo heading into Iraq either flies into or over Turkey.

Turkey's cooperation is also necessary for resolving border issues between Turkey and Iraq's Kurdish population.

Al Qaeda and its Taliban-style oppression

The UK Telegraph reports that Iraq's Sunnis have found out what al Qaeda is really like and have decided to switch their allegiance to the US. Omar Fadhil, of Iraq The Model, has more on Al Qaeda's latest tactics.

Working for the greater good

The Democrat strategy on Iraq is shifting again, according to Martin Kady at the Politico:

Congressional Democrats rode anti-war sentiment to victory last fall — but they are staking their success in the final months of this year’s calendar on more traditional domestic issues amid concern that the war may not be the potent political issue it once was by Election Day 2008.

With few Iraq votes expected in the next several weeks — a marked
departure from the first nine months of the new Democratic-controlled
Congress — Democrats are trying to build an agenda that’s heavy on
health care, community policing, housing, tax reform and other issues

In 1998, Democrats led the Senate to declare that overthrowing Saddam was US policy. When time came to vote on the war, many prominent Democrats, including Senators Edwards and Kerry, voted for the War. After the war started, they decided to oppose it loudly. This summer, they were concerned (that "would be a real problem for us") that the US might achieve victory in Iraq before the Democrats could legislate defeat. Now, after with their poll numbers have continued to drop, they are going to give the war the silent treatment. The one consistent point throughout all these maneuvers on matters of war and peace seems to that their aim is mere short-term political gain, very short-term.

How reporters rationalize their bias

On Sunday on Howard Kurtz's "Reliable Sources" (CNN), Robin Wright of the Washington Post and Barbara Starr of CNN explain that good news from Iraq should not be reported because one must be "skeptical" an recognize it might not represent a "trend" or it might be inaccurate. However, bad news should "certainly" be reported, apparently without asking about whether it is accurate or represents a "trend." See the transcript.

US 1, NY Times 0

The US killed another high-ranking Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, Abu Usama al-Tunisi. Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson explained that "Al-Tunisi was a leader in helping bring foreign terrorists into the country."

The party line at the New York Times is that this group is a "homegrown Sunni Arab extremist group" that "is not part of the Qaeda network." That might be why the New York Times buried mention of al Tunisi in paragraph 17 of their story, the only NYT story on al Tunisi according to a google news search, and then omit all mention of his being foreign and his recruiting foreign terrorists.

That was then, this is now

Senators Biden and Hagel are now both leading advocates of the preemptive surrender strategy in Iraq. This makes it curious to review an op-ed that they wrote, published December 20, 2002 in the Washington Post, that advocated ten-year effort to rebuild and stabilize Iraq:

IRAQ: THE DECADE AFTER

By Joseph R. Biden and Chuck Hagel

The United States will face enormous challenges in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, as well as broad regional questions that must be addressed. ....

Although no one doubts our forces will prevail over Saddam Hussein's, key regional leaders confirm what the Foreign Relations Committee emphasized in its Iraq hearings last summer: The most challenging phase will likely be the day after -- or, more accurately, the decade after -- Saddam Hussein.

Once he is gone, expectations are high that coalition forces will remain in large numbers to stabilize Iraq and support a civilian administration. That presence will be necessary for several years, given the vacuum there, which a divided Iraqi opposition will have trouble filling and which some new Iraqi military strongman must not fill. [emphasis added]

So, when they voted for the war, they were well aware that it would take a long effort, a "decade," to maintain the peace and rebuild. They had estimates of the number of troops needed that were somewhat low but not drastically off:

Various experts have testified that as many as 75,000 troops may be necessary, at a cost of up to $ 20 billion a year. That does not include the cost of the war itself, or the effort to rebuild Iraq

They did however know about the risks, even comparing Saddam's ethnic cleansing policy to Kosovo:

The northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk is an example of the perils American forces may encounter. It sits atop valuable oil fields and is home to a mixed population of Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds. In recent years, Saddam Hussein has expelled Turkmen and Kurds as part of an "Arabization," or ethnic cleansing, campaign. We toured a refugee camp housing 120,000 displaced people and heard countless stories of brutality and the loss of loved ones. Kirkuk could become the Iraqi version of Mitrovica, the volatile city in Kosovo where the U.N.-led administration has faced the dilemma of forcibly resettling people from various ethnic communities who have been evicted from their homes

The reach a conclusion:

[T]here is no escaping the fact that we face several related, interlocking crises in the region. [emphasis added]

The only difference now is that they want to escape.

Via BotW.