Pre-invasion: Proof of an al Qaeda/Iraq connection

Jon Stewart calls the bad intel on WMD’s the “original sin” of the Iraq War. He, and the rest of the Left, can’t get over it.

But there was more, much more, that President Bush and his administration put forth as reasons for the invasion of Iraq. Central to the argument was the need to overthrow Sadaam because he was sponsoring terrorism and harboring terrorists–including terrorists connected to al Qaeda.

For example, then-Secretary of State Collin Powell made the case in 2003 in front of the United Nations that Saddam was providing al Qaeda safe haven in Iraq. As evidence he alleged that Abu Mus’ab Al Zarqawi was an al Qaeda operative in northern Iraq.

For those who want to chastise the invasion of Iraq as misdirected and having nothing to do with al Qaeda, it became important to establish that Secretary of State Powell and the Bush Administration were “lying” to the UN.

Now there is confirmation of the Sadaam/al Qaeda connection out of Pakistan. From the American Thinker:

Now a man named Hamid Mir, who is an Executive Editor for Geo TV in Islamabad, Pakistan, writing for the popular India news website rediff.com, reveals his inside knowledge of the matter. Hamid is well-respected in Pakistan and is no Bush “neocon” conspirator. His writings subtly support al Qaeda.

While explaining how Usama bin Laden slipped away from US and British forces on several occasions he gave this account:
In April 2003, Osama surfaced again in Afghanistan after the US invasion of Iraq. He called a meeting in the Pech valley of the northeastern Afghan province Kunar and delivered a hard-hitting speech in which he announced his plans to resist America in Iraq. He said, ‘Get Americans in Iraq before they get us in Afghanistan.’

He declared Saif ul Adil as in charge of organising the resistance in Iraq and also advised him to contact Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who was hiding in Iran at that time.

Hamid’s narrative, which must rely for sourcing on his close association with al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, is as close as you can get to the inner circle without getting your head cut off. Perhaps unwittingly, his statements clearly indicate that Usama bin Laden directed one of his leaders to send Zarqawi to Iraq to fight Americans. Zarqawi, who had received treatment in Baghdad for a severed leg before this had to be known to Usama bin Laden as a man with Iraqi contacts for him to hand pick Zarqawi for such an assignment.

Although Hamid’s timeline appears erroneous since Zarqawi was already in Iraq at the time, it may be that he was relaying what Usama bin Laden said, and bin Laden would probably have been relying on dated information, since he had been in hiding for some time.

Whatever the details, Zarqawi is known to have already been in Iraq. Do critics of the war want to maintain it was sheer coincidence that the man identified by Powell as al Qaeda’s man in Iraq was hand-picked by Usama bin Laden? Zarqawi was al Qaeda, he was directed by Usama bin Laden and he was clearly there not to attack Saddam but to attack US forces.