A few days ago, a British newspaper found a document linking Al-Qaeda with the former Hussein regime in Iraq. A reporter found it laying in the rubble of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence agency. It detailed a week long summit between Iraqi intelligence a representative of Bin Laden, with hotel arrangements and such. [I wrote about this previously.]
A few people doubted the authenticity of the document. That may be a possibility, though I find it pretty unlikely. Beyond anything else, it would be foolhardy and risky to absolutely forge such a document. The likelihood of being busted for it would be pretty high, and the downside too great to contemplate. Heads would roll. My best guess is that it is authentic.
The question no one has asked, however, is how it is that some schlub from a newspaper got to be the one to find it? Now, there may be all kinds of juicy documents and tidbits for journalists all over that danged country, but this was Iraqi intelligence.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but offices of Iraqi intelligence services should have long since been gone over with a fine tooth comb by allied intelligence. They might conceivably want to take a couple of journalists with cameras along to document the chain of evidence or some such, but the CIA should have gone over that building pretty much stone by stone.
Why in hell would there be any documents laying around there for some random journalist to find? Enquiring minds want to know.
As a good Libertarian, I used to really suspect the intelligence community just on the basis of civil liberties issues- but I had the idea that they generally got the job done, even if they were somewhat corrupt. Now I'm getting serious doubts about them getting the job done. They didn't see 9/11 coming at us. They don't seem up to speed on finding WMDs, some of which would seem almost certain to be there.
OK, those are pretty tricky tasks. I may not have been able to do any better, hard telling. But would it take a flippin' PhD to know to throughly search intelligence offices for documents, right away?
Article comments
1 - Michael Croft
I'm on the fence on this one. There have been so many unreliable reports from Iraq through official channels that I'm skeptical of any report. But it may be that this is how a real report will get through. Hard to say. You talk about the risk of being discovered forging such a document. I'm not sure the risk and rewards are the same for all possible forgers. What, for instance, is the risk/reward ratio to an Iraqi who has been offered a large reward by The Telegraph for any evidence? Other possible forgers also exist.
I recall the 1991 invasion of Panama, where we were breathlessly informed that Noreiga had large bags of "suspicious white powder" in a freezer in his house as well as whole chickens. The analysts wondered if he was a Santaria-practicing cokehead. Later, significantly-less-well-publicized reports determined that the powder was flour and rather than the makings of a hopped-up orgy of chicken sacrifice, he had the makings of fried chicken.
I'm having trouble buying that there was a credible program to create, deploy, and use WMDs that we can't find any significant trace of.
And the question you raise about why a journalist from The Telegraph found this is exactly why I'm reserving judgement. Journalists have been known to be hoaxed in the past and I haven't seen anyone who desperately needs this to be true jumping on it.
On a related note, the CalPundit article Operation Snipe Hunt talks extensively about the question "What if we don't find any WMDs". Worth reading.
2 - Michael Croft
damn. 1989 invasion of Panama, of course.
3 - mike
Since there's no way to tell if an incriminating bin laden-Hussein document unearthed by a right wing newspaper (the U.K. Telegraph) is genuine, the evidence is not despositive without further validation.
Nonetheless, as I tried patiently to explain to my good friend Howard in another thread, there's nothing new in these documents. Contacts between Hussein and bin laden in '98 have been well documentated, but the meetings amounted to nothing. The differences between them were too vast; bin laden had offered to overthrow Hussein for the Saudis. The Al-Quada project includes the liquidation of all secular regimes in the Arab world, including Iraq's, Libya's and Jordan's.
Once again, as in Afghanistan in the 1980s, we are doing bin laden's dirty work.
It is impossible for a libertarian to support a war like this and still be a libertarian. As Jude Wanniski has noted, the Iraq war has facilitated the U.S.'s transition from market capitalism to statist capitalism, in which large corporations are woven into the government through a corrupt web of revolving door lobbying, donations in exchange for no-bid contracts; and the use of military force on behalf of corporate interests like Bechtel and Hallibutron.
The National Review is now as statist as any Old Left publication. Meet the new boss, same as......well, you know.
4 - Al Barger
It is impossible for a libertarian to support a war like this and still be a libertarian.
You are simply wrong there. I adhere to the same political principals I ever have. I came to the conclusion that taking down the Hussein regime was important to our national security. Not our business interests, or the interest of just wanting to kill people.
If you've got a rabid dog running around foaming at the mouth, my idea of libertarianism doesn't demand that you way till he bites you before you shoot the sick bastard down.
You don't get the authority to declare me out of the movement.
I'll note that I took a little convincing. I've never supported any major US military action in my lifetime. I was opposed to the first Gulf War.
In this case, looking at actual facts on the ground didn't seem to support my original knee jerk reaction. Indeed it does feel odd to find myself at least halfway supporting the president, but the rabid dogs have to be hunted down in their own lairs- or in ours one.
We are in a war because there are people killing us and trying to kill us. Not fighting is simply not an option. The question is whether we let them attack us repeatedly, or do we take the fight to them?
The answer seems obvious to me.
5 - Michael Croft
Al, who do you consider "these people"? On what basis did you determine that the Hussein regime was trying to kill us that makes them a bigger threat than Al-Queda, who have killed our people and will try again if we keep our eye off the ball and on other agendas?
6 - mike
The U.S. did not invade Iraq directly on behalf of Bechtel or other corporations, you are correct. But now that we in there, the U.S. will be obligated to intervene if Bechtel's projects are threatened by guerilla or terrorist violence. That is an example of what I mean by state capitalism.
I overstated my case, and agree that a libertarian is free to support the war (I'm a quasi-anarchist myself); but he or she must address the many anti-libertarian consequences of that war. War grows the state. How would you cut the root?