Iraq and al Qaida
Iraq, National Politics Comments (1)
This story relates the following news to us:
The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has received new information indicating that a senior officer in an elite unit of the security services of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been a member of al-Qaida involved in the planning of the suicide hijackings, panel members said Sunday.
John F. Lehman, a Reagan-era GOP defense official told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that documents captured in Iraq “indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam’s Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida.”
The Fedayeen were a special unit of volunteers given basic training in irregular warfare. The lieutenant colonel, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, has the same name as an Iraqi thought to have attended a planning meeting for the Sept. 11 attacks in January 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was also attended by two of the hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hamzi and senior al-Qaida leaders.
Now the article does present some other scenarios, like al Qaida penetrated Iraq’s security apparatus, or there just happened to be a Fedayeen Lieutenant Colonel who happened to be a “prominent al Qaida member.” Um. This is Saddam Hussein’s Iraq we’re talking about. You don’t get to be a Lieutenant Colonel in the dog catching service without extensive vetting and living under tight surveillance for years.
Excuse me while I discount that.
So, there may have been closer ties than the Democrats believed. Or, would have us believe.
MickC @ June 20, 2004