Saddam Hussein's Iraq cooperated with jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliates

National Review, April 21, 2008

Saddam Hussein's Iraq cooperated with jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliates. So concludes the Iraqi Perspectives Project, a Pentagon-commissioned analysis based on 600,000 documents captured by coalition forces since the March 2003 invasion. Why then do the mainstream media report, essentially, that the study found no indication of an operational relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda? In small compass, it is the story of the war: Members of the intelligence community who are opposed to administration policy selectively leak a misleading version of the evidence to likeminded journalists; they, in turn, breathlessly announce that the war's justification has been further refuted; and the administration, afraid of reopening the intelligence debate, fails to defend itself.

Thus the substance of this report is dismissed, even though it proves that Saddam plotted terrorism against the West, trained thousands of non-Iraqi jihadists, and conspired with such Qaeda confederates as Egyptian Islamic Jihad (run by bin Laden's number two, Ayman Zawahiri), Ansar al-Islam in Iraq, and the Army of Mohammed in Bahrain, as well as with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a strongman in Afghanistan. Americans who have fought and died in this righteous cause deserve better.