IDA関連のメモ
⇒Saddam’s terrorist support: More than we’d imagined | The Eureka Reporter
While the IDA report did not find an operational linkage between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaida, it is well-known that the Iraq regime did give VIP treatment to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (a high-level Osama aide) when he was seriously ill in a terrorist training camp in northeastern Iraq.
The IDA report, titled, “Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights From Captured Documents” makes it clear the world is a better place without this dictator and his murderous comrades.
Instead of squabbling over who is and isn't a member of al-Qaeda and what the requirements of a "link" or "connection" are, this report details Saddam's broad support for (and sometimes direction of) a multitude of terrorist groups targeting Americans and American allies. Based on the Iraqi Perspectives Project, Saddam's Iraq did not just use terrorism against America and her allies but took advantage of "the rising fundamentalism in the region" as an "opportunity to make terrorism . . . a formal instrument of state power." Because of Saddam's removal, which came at considerable cost in American blood and gold, a "formal instrument" of state terrorism is no longer secretly plotting to kill Americans. The American public deserves to know what a threat was removed for that price.
⇒International Analyst Network
The full report was then posted online, and made available by ABC News, does indeed include a sentence that no "smoking gun" linking Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda was discovered during their research but goes on to give compelling evidence that mustn't meet the authors criteria in the "smoking gun" test. A closer reading of the study (see here, here, here, here, here and here) shows that Saddam Hussein's Iraq cooperated with, financed and supported a number of Islamic terrorist groups, including al Qaeda proxies (at least five according to Thomas Joscelyn) and had a larger capacity for state apparatus terrorism (car bomb training, IED training, jihadist suicide bomber recruitment, etc.) than previously believed by many.
Of the many noteworthy findings in the report is the assertion made in the conclusion that Hussein had retained not only the capacity to launch anti-West terrorist attacks but the will to use those terrorist capabilities, including directly against the United States, which was also a matter of previous debate. The report's conclusion, while noting that a perfect grasp of Hussein's mindset at the exact time of U.S. invasion remained elusive, states that "evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces."
Instead of newspaper and television headlines such as "Hussein had the capability and intention of striking U.S. with terror attacks" the public is presented with disappointingly shallow stories that even days after the full version of the report is out still promoting the narrow "no links" narrative. The coming days and weeks should be a time when members of the media can and should put aside their previously conceived notions on this serious and important topic and read and then seriously report on this study. The time for that is long overdue.
後代の歴史家がどう見るか。
