I was curious what AFLAC's New York Post link was about. Here it is:


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SADDAM-OSAMA LINK

By CLEMENTE LISI


November 15, 2003 -- Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein gave terror lord Osama bin Laden's thugs financial and logistical support, offering al Qaeda money, training and haven for more than a decade, it was reported yesterday.
Their deadly collaboration - which may have included the bombing of the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks - is revealed in a 16-page memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee that cites reports from a variety of domestic and foreign spy agencies compiled by multiple sources, The Weekly Standard reports.

Saddam's willingness to help bin Laden plot against Americans began in 1990, shortly before the first Gulf War, and continued through last March, the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, says the Oct. 27 memo sent by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.

Two men were involved with the collaboration almost from its start.

Mamdouh Mahmud Salim - who's described as the terror lord's "best friend" - was involved in planning the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Another terrorist, Hassan al-Turabi, was said by an Iraqi defector to be "instrumental" in the relationship.

Iraq "sought al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with training and instructors," a top-level Iraqi defector has told U.S. intelligence.



The bombshell report says bin Laden visited Baghdad in January 1998 and met with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

"The goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan," the memo says.

Though the bombing of the USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000 was an al Qaeda job, the secret memo says the CIA believes "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."

The relationship between Saddam and bin Laden continued to grow in the aftermath of the Cole attack when two al Qaeda terrorists were deployed to Iraq to be trained in weapons of mass destruction and to obtain information on "poisons and gases."

CIA reporting shows the Saudi National Guard went on a "kingdom-wide state of alert in late December 2000 after learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia," the memo says.

And the report contains new information about alleged meetings between 9/11 mastermind Mohamed Atta and former Iraqi intelligence chief Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani in the Czech Republic.

Even some Bush administration officials have been skeptical about a purported meeting in April 2001.

But the secret memo says Atta met two other times in Prague with al Ani, in December 1994 and June 2000. It was during one of these meetings that al Ani "ordered the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office," the memo says.

The memo says the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden went forward even after 9/11.

Both sides allegedly reached a "secret deal" last year in which Iraq would provide "money and weapons" and obtain 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda members.

Al Qaeda associate Abu Maseb al Zarqwari also helped set up "sleeper cells" in Baghdad starting in October 2002.

The memo was sent to Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

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This is new from what I've seen previously about a link between Saddam's Iraq and Al Qaida. Prior reports did not state a direct link, this onbe does.

An earlier January 2003 New York Times article discussed Saddam employing Al Qaida as mercenaries to fight Kurdish rebels in the North of Iraq.

I previously discussed a book by Laurie Mulroie, about terrorists who had trained in camps inside Iraq, using a grounded 747 jet to learn hijacking techniques, that arguably could have been utilized in the 9/11 hijacking. She also discussed ties between Saddam, 1993 WTC bomber Ramsey Yousef, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. The information was from defectors to the U.S. who had trained in Saddam's terrorist camps. And a documented Saddam plot to assassinate George Bush Sr.
"The World's Reaction to the War" topic
http://www.rkmbs.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=212973&page=13&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=3&vc=1

The only report contradicted by FBI investigation is the report by Czech intelligence that Mohammad Atta had met with a Saddam intelligence official in Prague, just prior to the 9/11 bombing.
The FBI found that Atta had an open rental agreement for that period, so the FBI rejected that meeting validly reported.

But the report cited in this New York Post article cites two other meetings between Atta and Saddam's intelligence official. It occurred to me that he could have opened a rental agreement and left the car for someone else to use, while he was out of the country in the Czech Republic.

In any case, even without Al Qaida links, Saddam was a major sponsor of terror groups in Israel, offering training, weapons and other support to various Palestinian terror groups, and Saddam paid $25,000 to the families of every Palestinian suicide bomber.

I reject the idea that Bush's invasion of Iraq is or ever was about "greed".

Certainly, Bush has been clear that Iraq's resources belong to Iraq, and that the U.S. plans to leave as soon as Iraq establishes a self-sufficient police and defense force, to insure a healthy and stable Iraqi democracy.
Far from the notion of "greed" and profit, the evidence is abundantly clear that Iraq has already cost, and will continue to cost, the United States a great deal.

If the U.S. is successful, it will have --in establishing a democracy in the Middle East-- done a great deal to benefit the Muslim world, certainly far more than any other nation, and something it will no doubt never get credit for, from either the Muslim world or other U.S.-bashers around the world.

Mistakes have been made, certainly. But I still support what has occurred in Iraq. It is certainly better than anyone else's alternative. Although there really are no alteratives offered, just condemnation.

Except for notions that we "should have waited for the U.N." (which is a clear contradiction of the fact that France, and possibly Germany and Russia as well, made clear they would veto ANY resolution to invade Iraq, so waiting would never have borne fruit, and is just so much anti-American liberal revisionism that has no basis in fact).

And the U.N. with its most recent resolution now supports U.S. action and opens the door to nations like Japan, Turkey, and many other nations to send assistance.

But the assistance of these other U.N. nations combined would offer at most 30,000 troops, and probably a lot less.
So regardless of any cooperation of Bush with the U.N., the overwhelming brunt of it is and will remain on the U.S., no matter what is conceded by the U.S. And other nations don't WANT to take command from the U.S.

For any invasion of Iraq to have occurred, the U.S. had to do what it did, because the U.N. was giving zero cooperation, DESPITE seeing the same potential threat of Iraq as the U.S. cited. As U.N. resolutions against Iraq, and private intelligence of European nations makes clear.

What really pisses me off is that if the U.S. sends in more troops (as they did after the official end of the war, to do the job right against guerilla fighters) Democrats label it a "miserable failure" or a "quagmire" or "another Vietnam."
And if they lessen troop strength, then Bush is accused of "endangering the mission" and "caving in to political pressure" (the very political pressure that Democrats themselves are providing, to get out !)

I dislike the partisan accusations of Democrats, that criticize Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq, no matter what Bush does to stay the course.

Some of the criticism is warranted (such as vastly underestimating the cost of the war). But much of it unfair criticism that has no consistency, and vaccilates from one hysterical extreme to the other (too much, not enough...)