Zarqawi, al Qaeda and Saddam

Thomas Joscelyn:

NOW THAT ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI IS DEAD, perhaps the American press can also lay to rest the biggest myth about the mass murderer: that he had nothing to do with Saddam's regime prior to the war. It is not clear where this claim originated, but it is widely accepted. In the cover story for this month's Atlantic Monthly, for example, Mary Anne Weaver writes, "In his address to the United Nations making the case for war in Iraq, Powell identified al-Zarqawi--mistakenly, as it turned out--as the crucial link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime."

Similar statements can be found throughout the coverage of Zarqawi's barbarous life. But this says more about the desire to keep Saddam's reign separated from the rise of al Qaeda in Iraq's terror network than it does about the actual facts.

There is abundant evidence that Saddam's regime, at the very least, tolerated Zarqawi's existence in regime-controlled areas of Iraq prior to the war. Moreover, at least three high-level al Qaeda associates have testified to Saddam's warm welcome for Zarqawi and his associates.

Consider what a top al Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaydah, told his CIA interrogators after his capture in March 2002. According to the Senate Intelligence Report, Zubaydah said "he was not aware of a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda." But, he added that "any relationship would be highly compartmented and went on to name al Qaeda members who he thought had good contacts with the Iraqis." Zubaydah "indicated that he heard that an important al-Qaida associate, Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, and others had good relationships with Iraqi intelligence."

Zubaydah's testimony has since been further corroborated by a known al Qaeda ideologue, Dr. Muhammad al-Masari. Al-Masari operated the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, a Saudi oppositionist group and al Qaeda front, out of London for more than decade. He told the editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi that Saddam "established contact with the 'Afghan Arabs' as early as 2001, believing he would be targeted by the US once the Taliban was routed." Furthermore, "Saddam funded Al-Qaeda operatives to move into Iraq with the proviso that they would not undermine his regime."

Al-Masari claimed that Saddam's regime actively aided Zarqawi and his men prior to the war and fully included them in his plans for a terrorist insurgency. He said Saddam "saw that Islam would be key to a cohesive resistance in the event of invasion." Iraqi officers bought "small plots of land from farmers in Sunni areas" and they buried "arms and money caches for later use by the resistance."

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There is more. This "no connection with al Qaeda" myth is clearly important to the anti war left as a rational for not deposing a genocidal despot who was shooting at US pilots regularly as they attmpted to stop his attacks on the Shia and Kurds.