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MEMO LEAK UPDATE

As readers of Calpundit may be aware, the Defense Department put out a news release condemning the recent Feith memo leak to the Weekly Standard.

I’m sorry Kevin, the antiwar battlecry has been ” no relation between al Qaida and Saddam ” and the raw data shows such contacts and cooperation on an irregular basis at a minimum between Iraq and al Qaida. Now Iraq probably also had contacts with Hamas, Hezbollah, the PKK, Ansar al Islam, various PLO factions and groups with no obvious Middle-Eastern connection. Rogue states and terrorist groups engage in all kinds of interactions amongst themselves without being formally allied – case in point IRA members in Colombia teaching FARC to build car bombs. It would be wrong to conclude that contacts between Iraq and al Qaida made Saddam a major player in 9/11 or even a key consideration for Osama bin Laden in setting al Qaida policy. It was to the extent that ties existed, a relationship of convenience between a rogue state and a non-state actor that was unwilling to put itself under Iraqi control the way Abu Nidal Organization once did ( to the ultimate cost of Abu Nidal)

HONEYPOTS FOR TERRORISTS

Link courtesy of Cryptome.

SADDAM AND AL QAIDA HAD DIRECT AND ONGOING TIES FOR A DECADE

Memo leak from the Senate investigation of pre-war intelligence courtesy of the Weekly Standard. This would tend to confirm the reportage in the recent book _Losing Bin Laden_ by Richard Miniter that featured in depth interviews with high ranking former Clinton Administration officials. It also supports the thesis of an anti-American tactical alliance between Saddam’s Baathist regime and al Qaida made by Yossef Bodansky in his earlier book _Bin Laden_.

Should this memo withstand greater public scrutiny – and the Bush administration would be foolish not to shout this from the rooftops if it is as good as it seems to be – one of the major antiwar arguments that Iraq had little or nothing to do with al Qaida has just been blown all to hell.

AL QAIDA AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION – A REFERENCE CHART WITH SOURCES AND CITATIONS

Useful for any blogosphere terrorism debate.

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION WORLD MAP

Go here Just the briefest of overviews and while it is from Carnegie they must be using the official statistics for defense budgets rather than best estimates in real terms. It is a handy reference however.