Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin neglected to go down to the county courthouse and file a signed and notarized partnership agreement. Instead, Iraq’s government covertly supplied funding and weapons and provided training facilities, medical treatment, and sanctuary to individual terrorist leaders and to a confusing array of variously named and affiliated terrorist groups.

Deniability is, of course, precisely why governments, like that of the former Baathist regime of Iraq, employ surrogate non-state actors as instruments of violence against Western states. If Iraq attacked the United States openly, the legitimacy of a full-scale US military response would have been unquestioned. Because actual attacks are committed by a handful of individuals affiliated with obscure jihadist entities, leftwing members of the US Intelligence Community always find themselves conveniently able to maintain that no definitive proof linking a sponsoring state like Iraq is available.

Michael Tanji explains how the game is played.

There is perhaps no clearer example of why the U.S. intelligence community has such a serious credibility problem than the recently released report on the relationship between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and terrorist groups. Media outlets friendly to the meme that there was no such connection were leaked a copy of the report and latched on to the statement that there was no “smoking gun” linking Saddam and al-Qaeda. Clearly, however, none of those reporters bothered to actually read the report or ask any critical questions.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of Islamic terrorism who read the early headlines and then read the report cannot help but come away with a severe case of cognitive dissonance. Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism and had we not gone to war with Iraq after 9/11, it would still be a focal point in our fight against Islamic terror. That Saddam and bin Laden never shook hands–presumably the only “smoking gun” that the most obtuse analysts of this subject would accept–is hardly the point. …

Nothing illustrates this more clearly than documents from Saddam’s own intelligence service, which confirm that the regime was funding the group Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the early 1990s. Led by Ayman al Zawahiri, the EIJ eventually morphed into what most observers call “core” al Qaeda. Zawahiri became al Qaeda’s second in command when al Qaeda was formed in the late 1980s. Saying Iraq was not supporting al Qaeda, when there was no meaningful distinction between the EIJ and al Qaeda, strains credulity.

Therein lies the problem: this report–and every assessment dealing with intelligence or national security matters–is crafted with such extreme precision in an impossible quest to be “right” that they end up being absurdly wrong. This quest for false precision skews our understanding of very clear and simple truths. This is part of the reason why so many policymakers of all political persuasions hold intelligence in such disdain. The books and articles that document Saddam’s relationship with terrorist groups that were published before this report was issued are numerous and draw largely the same conclusions that this review of classified material shows. Secrets are only valuable if they tell you something meaningful that you didn’t already know.

This is a problem that is endemic in the intelligence community and particularly bad in agencies that have taken a beating in recent years for providing incomplete information about the threat posed by Iraq’s WMD programs. To compensate, agencies caveat their work to the point that ten different people reading the same report will come away with at least nine different interpretations of the report’s findings. By not making unambiguous calls about what is known and more importantly what is unknown, intelligence agencies don’t serve their consumers; they confuse and infuriate them.

Ambiguity, a permanent feature of Intelligence, becomes in the hands of the sophists of the Intelligence Community’s anti-Bush establishment a very effective tool for undermining policy. By utilizing a 100% standard of certainty, requiring unimpeachable and totally disinterested first-hand witnesses of excellent character, and clear documentary evidence, it becomes possible to exculpate both pre-2003 Iraq and today’s Iran of any role in terrorism or efforts to acquire WMD at all, and thereby to delegitimize the Bush Administration’s casus belli.

Kenneth R. Timmerman debunks the partisan Institute for Defense Analysis study, at Newsmax, with chapter and verse from his new book.

I have written about the Harmony data base of captured Iraqi military and intelligence documents in my recent book, “Shadow Warriors: Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender.”

One of the most damning documents to emerge from the Harmony data base, I wrote, was a Jan. 18, 1993 order from Saddam Hussein, transmitted to the head of Iraqi intelligence, “to hunt the Americans that are in Arab lands, especially in Somalia, by using Arab elements or Asian (Muslims) or friends.”

In response, the head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service informed Hussein that Iraq already had ties with a large number of international terrorist groups, including “the Islamist Arab elements that were fighting in Afghanistan and [currently] have no place to base and are physically present in Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt.” In other words, al-Qaida.

The authors of the IDA study note that Saddam’s Iraq “was a long-standing supporter of international terrorism,” and that these particular documents provided ‘detailed evidence of that support.’”

The study also points out that the captured documents “reveal that Saddam was training Arab fighters (non-Iraqi) in Iraqi training camps more than a decade prior” to the 2003 war.

But the study shies away from identifying them as al-Qaida terrorists, even though many of them were members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose leader, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri, became the deputy leader of al-Qaida in 1998.

While the IDA study includes no information that would show operational ties between Saddam’s regime and the 9/11 hijackers, it reveals that Saddam personally gave orders on Sept. 17, 2001 to his general military intelligence directorate to recruit Iraqi officers for “suicide operations” against the United States.

The 112-page Harmony data file ISGQ-2005-00037352 contains Saddam’s order, as well as personal pledges to carry out suicide operations from more than one hundred “volunteers,” including a brigadier general.

In the order he issued just one week after the 9/11 attacks, Saddam stated that the volunteers should sign pledges “to be written in blood,” presumably their own.

Four years before this order, Saddam announced with great fanfare that he had tasked a prominent Iraqi calligrapher to produce a Quran written with his own blood. Saddam reportedly had doctors draw his blood for the task.

Several other key documents are glaringly absent from the IDA report and provide direct evidence of Saddam Hussein’s deep involvement with al-Qaida and its component organizations.

Among them is a 1999 notebook kept by an unidentified Iraqi intelligence official that detailed meetings between top Iraqi leaders and visiting Islamic terrorists. (Harmony document ISGP-2003-0001412).

One Baghdad visitor was Maulana Fazlur Rahman a signer of Osama bin Laden’s infamous 1998 fatwa calling on Muslims to “murder Americans.” Another was Afghan mujahedin leader Gulbudin Hekmatyar, who was also supported by Iran.

Roy Robison, a former U.S. government contractor who published an analysis of Saddam’s relationship to al-Qaida last year, argues that when Rahman met with Iraqi Vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan in 1999 “he did so as the father of the Taliban and as a leader of the World Islamic Front which declared war on the U.S the year before.”

Another document not included in this latest report was a review by Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) of their ongoing ties with Osama bin Laden and other opponents to the Saudi regime (Harmony document ISGZ-2004-009247).

This document reads like a memorandum for the record, written in early 1997, tracing the beginnings of the Iraqi regime’s relationship to Osama bin Laden.

In a letter dated Jan. 11, 1995, Saddam Hussein personally authorized the General Director of Intelligence to establish direct contact with bin Laden in Sudan, the report states.

The initial meeting with bin Laden took place just one month later, on Feb. 19, 1995, and included an offer by Iraq to provide bin Laden with broadcasting facilities and a discussion of plans “to perform joint operations against foreign forces in the land of Hijaz [ie, Saudi Arabia].

Following bin Laden’s expulsion from Sudan, in July 1996, the memo states that the Iraqi intelligence service is “working to revitalize this relationship through a new channel.”

The IDA report includes in its supporting documentation a detailed report by the Iraqi general director of intelligence in response to an “action directive” issued by Saddam on Jan. 18, 1993, ordering his intelligence service to establish relations with terrorist groups around the world and to develop the “expertise to carry out assignments.”

In addition to a variety of Palestinian groups, the document lists the Hezb Islami of Afghanistan, the Islamic Scholars Group of Pakistan, the Jam’iyat “Ulama Pakistan, all of which subsequently became affiliated with al-Qaida.

The authors of the IDA report note in the abstract accompanying their work that the captured documents provide “evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including . . . Islamic terrorist organizations.”

While the documents “do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al-Qaida network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al-Qaida,” and to provide financing and training of these outside groups.

“This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a ‘de facto’ link between the organizations,” the report’s authors stated. …

Contrary to the accounts that have appeared in mainstream media outlets, the Harmony documents and the IDA report show beyond any doubt that Saddam Hussein was willing to fund, train, and use Islamic terrorists, including groups affiliated with al-Qaida, to carry out his long-standing plans against the United States and U.S. allies in the region.

A 2002 annual report to the Iraq Intelligence Service M8 directorate of liberation movements shows that the IIS hosted 13 terrorist conferences during the year, and that Saddam personally received 37 congratulatory messages from international terrorist groups. The annual report also noted that the IIS had issued 699 passports to terrorists during the year.

“Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al-Qaida [such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri], or that generally shared al-Qaida’s stated goals and objectives,” the IDA report states.

But an element of competition also kept Saddam from too much direct involvement with al-Qaida, the IDA report states.

While both Saddam and bin Laden wanted to drive the West out of Muslim lands and to create a single powerful state that would replace America as a global superpower, “bin Laden wanted — and still wants — to restore the Islamic caliphate while Saddam, despite his later Islamic rhetoric, dreamed more narrowly of being the secular ruler of a united Arab nation,” the report’s authors state.

The relationship between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden bore some resemblance to the Cali and Medellin drug cartels.

While the seemingly rival cartels were vying for market share, “neither cartel was reluctant to cooperate with the other when it came to the pursuit of a common objective,” the report’s authors state.

“Recognizing Iraq as a second, or parallel, “terror cartel” that was simultaneously threatened by and somewhat aligned with its rival helps to explain the evidence emerging from the detritus of Saddam’s regime,” the IDA report states.

One terror tie apparently put to rest in this latest report are the suspicions that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

Analysts such as Laurie Mylroie have argued for years that Saddam’s regime was behind the 1993 attack, and cited as evidence the fact that a key member of the plot, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Iraq immediately after the bombing.

As I reported in Shadow Warriors, Saddam Hussein recorded all meetings in his presidential office, and the Harmony data base includes tapes from a series of meetings during 1993 that discussed the interrogation of Yasin.

Saddam “discusses the possibility that the attack was part of the ‘dirty games that the American intelligence would play if it had a bigger purpose,’” and expresses concern that Yasin might be an American agent, the IDA report states.

According to Saddam, Yassin was “too organized in what he is saying and [he] is playing games, playing games and influencing the scenario” during his interrogations by Iraqi intelligence. Saddam ordered that the interrogations continue but “actually warns against allowing Yasin to commit suicide or be killed in jail,” the report states.

Saddam believed that “the most important thing is not to let the Arabic public opinion [believe] we are cooperating with the US against the opposition. I mean that is why our announcement [that Yasin is being held] should include doubts . . . [about] who carried out this operation. Because it is possible that in the end we will discover — even if it is a very weak possibility — that a fanatic group who carried it organized the operation.”

Saddam and his advisors were hoping to use the interrogations of Yasin, and whatever information they could gather from him about the organizers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to enhance their position in world public opinion.

If handled correctly, Saddam said, Yasin’s confessions “will benefit us greatly; it will benefit us in our issue in the matter of the stance that the U.S. has taken against us.”

Osama has a new video in which he accuses coalition forces of deliberately killing women and children (He’d never do that!), but notes that the Danish cartoons were much worse.

Rusty Shackleford has the 5:05 video at the bottom of his article.

THE MSM (example: New York Times) pounced when, on a recent trip to the Middle East, in Amman Jordan, Senator John McCain heretically spoke of Iran providing training and financing for al Qaeda.

Thomas Joscelyn debunks the well-known liberal meme about how it’s absolutely impossible for Shiites and Sunni to make common cause against unbelievers.

• Earlier this month, the U.S. military and the current head of Iraqi intelligence reported that Iran has been targeting al Qaeda’s enemies–not al Qaeda itself–inside Iraq. There have also been a number of reports on Iran’s support for al Qaeda in Iraq. The Kurds have routinely complained about Iran’s support for al Qaeda’s affiliate, Ansar al-Islam. For more on Ansar al-Islam’s ties to Iran, and other bad actors, see Dan Darling’s excellent primer. As Darling wrote: “Another apparent relationship exists between Ansar and radical elements of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which seeks to use Ansar as a proxy force against the Coalition in Iraq.”

• More generally, the theological differences between Iran and al Qaeda have never been a serious impediment to cooperation. For example, I wrote a lengthy essay on the topic of Iran’s cooperation with al Qaeda going back to the early 1990’s. And in a recent piece, I detailed the evidence cooperation between Iran’s chief terrorist, the late Imad Mugniyah, and al Qaeda.

• The 9-11 Commission found extensive evidence of collaboration between Iran and al Qaeda. For example, the Commission concluded (p. 61): “The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations.”

• The Clinton administration recognized the relationship between al Qaeda, Iran, and Iran’s terrorist proxy, Hezbollah. Here is, in part, what the Clinton administration charged in its indictment of al Qaeda following the August 1998 embassy bombings: “USAMA BIN LADEN, the defendant, and al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with representatives of the government of Iran, and its associated terrorist group Hizballah, for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.”

• The mainstream media, including the Washington Post itself, has reported on Iran’s ties to al Qaeda. But now a blog hosted by the Washington Post dismisses the idea that the two could collaborate.

John McCain was right the first time. He shouldn’t have taken his comment back. But this whole imbroglio shows just how much ignorance there is concerning our terrorist enemies.

Richard Miniter, at PJM, tells you what the MSM will not about the scope, details, and omissions of the Institute for Defense Analysis study whose recently leaked executive summary was widely reported to have shown that there was “no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.”

Miniter provides considerable details on Iraqi officials’ meetings with al Qaeda, Iraqi funding of al Qaeda affilates, Iraqi provided training, and al Qaeda personnel carrying Iraqi passports or obtaining refuge in Iraq.

Bush’s entrenched opponents within the admnistration fabricate another sophistical analysis denying the obvious and leak it to the Press, and George W. Bush fails to answer them. Bill Kristol explains why the Bush Administration is again ducking debating the case against Saddam.

Late last week, the Defense Department released an analysis of 600,000 documents captured in Iraq prepared by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally funded think tank. Here’s the attention-grabbing sentence from the report’s executive summary: “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e. direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.”

Relying on a leak of the executive summary, ABC News reported that the study was “the first official acknowledgment from the U.S. military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda.” There followed a brief item in the Washington Post that ran under the headline “Study Discounts Hussein, Al-Qaeda Link.” The New York Times announced: “Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie.” NPR agreed: “Study Finds No Link Between Saddam, bin Laden.”

And the Bush administration reacted with an apparently guilty silence.

But here’s the truth. The executive summary of the report is extraordinarily misleading. …

Take a look …at the documents showing links between Saddam Hussein and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Apparently whoever wrote the executive summary didn’t consider the link between Saddam and al Zawahiri a “direct connection” because Egyptian Islamic Jihad had not yet, in the early 1990s, fully been incorporated into al Qaeda. Of course, by that standard, evidence of support provided to Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s might not be deemed a “direct connection” because al Qaeda as we know it today did not yet exist.

If you talk to people in the Bush administration, they know the truth about the report. They know that it makes the case convincingly for Saddam’s terror connections. But they’ll tell you (off the record) it’s too hard to try to set the record straight. Any reengagement on the case for war is a loser, they’ll say. Furthermore, once the first wave of coverage is bad, you can never catch up: You give the misleading stories more life and your opponents further chances to beat you up in the media. And as for trying to prevent misleading summaries and press leaks in the first place–that’s hopeless. Someone will tell the media you’re behaving like Scooter Libby, and God knows what might happen next.

So, this week’s fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war will bring us countless news stories reexamining the case for war, with the White House essentially pleading nolo contendere. Even though there is abundant evidence that Iraq was a serious state sponsor of terrorism–and would almost certainly have become a greater one if Saddam had been left in power–most Americans will assume there was no real Saddam-terror connection. After all, they haven’t heard the Bush administration say otherwise.

Miguel A. Guanipa, in the course of analyzing Obama’s vulnerabilities in the presidential campaign, debunks the conventional leftwing meme that it is American action which produces terrorism, the contemporary political equivalent of the medieval belief in the spontaneous generation of pests and vermin from decaying matter.

With the irreverent chutzpah of a snickering 8 year old tattler telling on his older sibling, Obama indulged an excitable crowd of adoring fans with the rather overused and unproven refrain that — contrary to McCain’s beliefs — Al Qaeda was not present in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion. …

To suggest that American intervention begets more terrorism denotes a subtle endorsement of the novel diplomatic principle that a policy of retreat and noninvolvement would automatically yield better relations with the consistently volatile potentates of Middle Eastern regimes. This simple-minded sequitur continues to galvanize radical leftwing Democrats, who are already sold on the proposition that there is an inverse link between the number of terrorists in the world and the level of what is generally considered by them to be America’s modest record of charity and good will through its international relations role.

It is true that terrorism did not make the headlines as frequently when the United States remained basically uninvolved in the political affairs of countries that harbored terrorist organizations. This does not mean that the latter were heretofore virtually nonexistent and suddenly sprang up in response to the United States’ unjustified military intervention in other countries’ affairs.

This is not only a gross misunderstanding of the reasons for the existence of terrorism, it also dishonors the sacrifices of those who have the courage to be proactive about it, and what is worse, it casts them as the culprits in front of a global audience.

By effectively engaging the terrorists, America has simply forced them to expose their clandestine operations, which only the ill-informed would deny have long been in existence. Until they reached an apex of sorts on September 11, 2001, the media had decided that such operations scarcely merited their attention. Since then, simply recycling the same old tune, that it is our fault terrorism has become such a problem around the world, no longer represents a viable argument against intervention anytime the sitting president perceives a clear threat to national security.

USS Benfold (DDG 65) Guided Missile Destroyer

If you are the US Navy, whom do you make a signalman on a destroyer going potentially into harm’s way in the Persian Gulf? Why Hassan Abu-Jihaad, of course!

But, I suppose, excluding someone from a high security assignment just because he has converted to Islam and was calling himself “father of Jihad” would be profiling, and we can’t possibly do anything so politically incorrect.

AP:

U.S. Navy commanders were wary as their ships headed to the Persian Gulf in the months after a terrorist ambush in 2000 killed 17 sailors aboard the USS Cole.

Passing the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow, busy shipping lane that often invited challenges from Iran, was never easy. Ship commanders decided to travel quickly at night after conducting a drill. Sailors took up machine gun positions and shut valves and hatches to limit damage in case of attack.

“We really weren’t sure what to expect,” said Lt. Commander Jay Wylie, who was on board the USS Benfold.

No one expected to find a threat from within.

But federal authorities say there was. A Benfold signalman, Hassan Abu-Jihaad, had provided suspected terrorist supporters in London with sensitive details of when U.S. ships would pass through the strait and their vulnerability to attack, prosecutors say.

Testimony last week in Abu-Jihaad’s trial has provided a window into the fears of top Navy officials after an explosives-laden boat rammed the Cole as it refueled in a Yemen harbor. It also revealed how heightened vigilance after Sept. 11 triggered an investigation that began in Connecticut and expanded to London before Abu-Jihaad and others were arrested.

Abu-Jihaad, 32, of Phoenix, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging he provided material support to terrorists and disclosed classified national defense information.

Prosecutors rested their case Friday. Abu-Jihaad does not plan to take the stand Monday when his attorneys call one witness before closing arguments.

Abu-Jihaad, an American born Muslim convert, changed his name from Paul Hall in 1997. A year later, he was granted security clearance that gave him access to secrets, according to Navy officials.

Abu-Jihaad was one of the first sailors Petty Officer Josh Kelly met when he boarded the Benfold. Abu-Jihaad was chatty about where the ship was headed, Kelly says.

“We always wonder where we were going,” Kelly testified, noting the stress of life at sea.

But advance movements were a closely guarded secret. Dennis Amador, a quartermaster and Abu-Jihaad’s supervisor, told his wife where he was in code.

“We in the Navy are taught from the minute we come in that loose lips sink ships,” he said.

Those details were kept locked in a safe with a red sticker marked secret. But when the charts and travel plans were laid out, Abu-Jihaad could see them in his job as a signalman, Navy officials say.

The Benfold and other ships left San Diego in March 2001. Their first stop was Hawaii, where the sailors were treated to a luau feast.

As the ship headed toward the Middle East, Abu-Jihaad began to send e-mails to Azzam Publications, a Web site that authorities say provided money and equipment to terrorists.

While the Cole was the worst nightmare for commanders, Abu-Jihaad called it a martyrdom operation in one of his e-mails to Azzam and praised “the men who have brong (sic) honor … in the lands of jihad Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, etc.”

Abu-Jihaad signed the e-mail: “A brother serving a kuffar nation,” meaning nonbeliever or infidel, according to testimony. He also ordered graphic videos from Azzam that depicted Muslim fighters in Chechnya and Bosnia.

Newsbusters notes the discrepancies between the current version of the facts as defined by the establishment media and some previous reporting.

While it is currently conventional wisdom in the media that there was no Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the 2003 invasion, as evidenced by the media’s failure to correct Barack Obama’s recent claim that “there was no such thing as Al-Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq,” for several years dating back before the Iraq invasion, there have been media reports of former Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s connections to Osama bin Laden, and his use of Iraq as a base to plot terror attacks against other countries before the war. In fact, four years ago, the NBC Nightly News claimed not only that there was an Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the invasion, busy plotting attacks against Europe, but that the Bush administration intentionally “passed up several opportunities” to attack terrorist bases in Iraq “long before the war” in 2002 because of fear it would “undercut its case” for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

On the March 2, 2004 NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw introduced the report: “[Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] is widely believed to have ties to Al-Qaeda, and the Bush administration apparently passed up several opportunities to take him out well before the Iraq war began.”

And on the January 27, 2003 NBC Nightly News, after revelations of a plot to attack targets in Europe with the poison ricin, which was believed to have been hatched by Zarqawi in Iraq, correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported that “U.S. Special Forces had plans to launch a covert raid against the Kirmadara complex [in northern Iraq], but Pentagon officials say it was called off because the Bush administration feared it would interfere with upcoming UN weapon inspections.”

Although some have tried to argue that Zarqawi did not declare allegiance to bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization until after the Iraq invasion, as far back as April 4 and May 16, 2001, AP’s Jamal Halaby reported that Jordanian authorities suspected Zarqawi, also known as Ahmad Fadeel Al-Khalayleh, of plotting attacks in Jordan, and relayed that Zarqawi was “believed to be in Afghanistan.”

On November 9, 2002, a London Times article by Roger Boyes and Daniel McGrory, citing Hans-Josef Beth of the German secret service BND, claimed that Zarqawi “used London as his base until Osama bin Laden ordered him to move to Afghanistan in 2000 to run one of al-Qaeda’s training camps.”

On December 18, 2002, after the arrests of several terror suspects in France amid fears of a chemical weapon attack, Sebastian Rotella of the Los Angeles Times reported that “A top Al Qaeda suspect said to be commanding a campaign targeting Europe is Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian reputedly knowledgeable about chemical warfare, according to German and Italian intelligence officials.”

On December 19, 2002, Knight Ridder’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reported, citing Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu al Ragheb, that Zarqawi was behind the murder of American diplomat Lawrence Foley, and was believed to be “an ally of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.” Ragheb further contended that Zarqawi “was probably in northern Iraq working with Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish Muslim extremist group.” Jordanian officials were also cited as claiming that the men suspected of carrying out Foley’s murder met Zarqawi “in Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.”

Jonah Goldberg puts the pious party’s torture meme into perspective.

Less than five minutes.

That’s the total amount of time the United States has waterboarded terrorist detainees. How many detainees? Three. Who were these detainees?

A group of activists demonstrates “waterboarding,” a technique that has been used on prisoners by government agencies, in New York’s Times Square January 11, 2008. The interrogation practice has been at the center of a bitter dispute about what constitutes torture.

One was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, “the principle architect of the 9/11 attacks” according to the 9/11 Report, and the head of al-Qaeda’s “military committee.” Linked to numerous terror plots, he is believed to have financed the first World Trade Center bombing, helped set up the courier system that resulted in the infamous Bali bombing, and cut off Danny Pearl’s head.

A second was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the head of al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf. He allegedly played a role in the 2000 millennium terror plots and was the mastermind behind the USS Cole attack that killed 17 Americans.

The third was Abu Zubaydah, said to be Osama bin Laden’s top man after Ayman al Zawahri and al-Qaeda’s chief logistics operative. It is believed that Zubaydah essentially ran al-Qaeda’s terror camps and recruitment operations. After he was waterboarded, Zubaydah reportedly offered intelligence officers a treasure trove of critical information. He was waterboarded just six months after the 9/11 attacks and while the anthrax scare was still ongoing.

John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer who witnessed the interrogation, told ABC’s Brian Ross: “The threat information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

He divulged, according to Kiriakou, “al-Qaeda’s leadership structure” and identified high-level terrorists the CIA didn’t know much, if anything, about. It’s been suggested that Zubaydah and al-Nashiri’s confessions in turn led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

And that’s it. Less than five minutes, three awful men, five years ago.

Read the whole thing.

British suspect, tripped in the lavatory

Younes Tsouli, a 23-year-old IT student and son of a Morrocan diploma, is facing terrorism charges in Britain for building several web sites since 2005, including one revealingly titled YOUBOMBIT, promoting Islamic extremism and supporting al Qaeda. His web-sites featured videos of speeches by Osama bin Laden and images of kidnappings and the murder of hostages in Iraq.

The Daily Mail reports that “his arrest led to the arrest of several Islamic terrorists around the world, including 17 men in Canada and two in the US.”

Looking at Mr. Tsouli’s face in the above photograph, one is obliged to conclude that either the poor chap fell down several times, or that he might just possibly have been on the receiving end of some encouragement to talk from British authorities. But there’s not even the slightest notice in the linked British news story of all the marks and contusions on the young man’s face. Just imagine what the New York Times or the Washington Post would say if some pro-al-Qaeda programmer were arraigned in a US court looking like that.

The Wall Street Journal notes a certain irony in the characteristic choice of pro bono activity expressive of today’s cultural values at an elite institution like Yale Law School.

John Yoo can be forgiven if he’s having second thoughts about his career choice. A Yale Law School graduate, the Berkeley professor of law went on to serve his country at the Justice Department. Yet last week he was sued by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla and his mother, who are represented by none other than lawyers at Yale. Perhaps if Mr. Yoo had decided to pursue a life of terrorism, he too could be represented by his alma mater.

Padilla is the American citizen who was arrested in 2002, and detained as an “enemy combatant” in a military brig in Charleston, S.C., under suspicion of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a U.S. city. Padilla fought his detention on Constitutional grounds, losing his case in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In January 2006, the feds transferred him out of military custody to be tried in civilian court in Miami. The dirty bomb charge was never filed because the military hadn’t read him his Miranda rights or provided him a lawyer when he was interrogated. A jury nonetheless took a day and half last August to convict him of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas. Padilla could get life in prison.

Mr. Yoo is the former deputy assistant attorney general who wrote memos laying out some of the legal parameters in the war on terror. Those memos most famously pertained to interrogation techniques, some of which were used against such enemy combatants as Padilla. Mr. Yoo long ago returned to Berkeley, and we are happy to say he sometimes writes for us.

Now, years later, Mr. Yoo is being harassed by a lawsuit claiming he is personally liable for writing those memos as a midlevel government official. “Defendant Yoo subjected Mr. Padilla to illegal conditions of confinement and treatment that shocks the conscience in violation of Mr. Padilla’s Fifth Amendment Rights to procedural and substantive due process,” the complaint asserts.

But Padilla’s rights weren’t violated, and certainly not by Mr. Yoo, whose legal arguments at the time were accepted by his superiors, including Attorney General John Ashcroft. The decision to hold Padilla as an enemy combatant was made by President Bush, and defended in court by executive branch lawyers. They won that case in the most senior court in which it was heard, in an opinion written by then-Judge Michael Luttig of the Fourth Circuit. The Bush Administration later transferred Padilla to be tried in the Miami court, and the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. Padilla got his day in court — on both Constitutional and criminal grounds — and lost.

What we really have here is less a tort claim than a political stunt intended to intimidate government officials. Nothing in the claim will change Padilla’s future, and the suit asks for only $1 in damages, plus legal fees. Instead, the suit seeks “a judgment declaring that the acts alleged herein are unlawful and violate the Constitution and laws of the United States.” In short, the Yale attorneys are using Padilla as a legal prop in one more attempt to find a judge willing to declare that the Bush Administration’s antiterror policies are illegal. And if it can harass Mr. Yoo with bad publicity and legal costs along the way, so much the better.

This is nasty business and would have damaging consequences if it worked. Government officials have broad legal immunity (save for criminal acts) precisely so they can make decisions without worrying about personal liability. If political appointees can be sued years later for advice that was accepted by their superiors, we will soon have a government run not by elected officials but by tort lawyers and judges.

The antiwar left has failed to overturn U.S. policies in Congress, or by directly challenging the government in court. So its latest tactic is suing third parties, such as the telephone companies that cooperated on al Qaeda wiretaps after 9/11. And now it is suing former government officials, hoping to punish them and deter future appointees from offering any advice that the left dislikes.

Which brings us back to Yale. The real litigant here is the National Litigation Project at the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School. That sounds august, but this is really a leftwing bucket shop using Yale’s sponsorship to achieve antiwar policy goals via lawsuit. We trust the dean of Yale Law, Harold Koh, is proud of suing an alumnus on behalf of a terrorist, and that Yale’s other alumni know how their donations are being used.