{"id":580,"date":"2003-11-17T15:39:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-17T15:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=580"},"modified":"2003-11-17T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2003-11-17T15:39:00","slug":"580","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=580","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>MEMO LEAK UPDATE <\/b><\/p>\n<p>As readers of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calpundit.com\/archives\/002652.html\">Calpundit<\/a> may be aware, the Defense Department put out a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dod.mil\/releases\/2003\/nr20031115-0642.html\">news release <\/a>condemning the recent Feith memo leak to the Weekly Standard.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sorry Kevin, the antiwar battlecry has been &#8221; no relation between al Qaida and Saddam &#8221; 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 &#8211; case in point <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/northern_ireland\/2043156.stm\">IRA members in Colombia<\/a> teaching <a href=\"http:\/\/observer.guardian.co.uk\/nireland\/story\/0,11008,615950,00.html\">FARC to build car bombs<\/a>. 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)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;m sorry Kevin, the antiwar battlecry has been &#8221; no relation between al Qaida and Saddam &#8221; and the raw data shows such contacts and cooperation on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}