I personally doubt that Al-Qaeda had anything more than low level contacts with the Iraqi regime, and certainly less than what they have had with other governments like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and even Iran. The Mukhabarat did supposedly have an agent inside the Ansar ul-Islam leadership, which in turn had plenty of links to Al-Qaeda, although strictly speaking it was a seperate organisation. There is also Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi allegedly receiving medical assistance somewhere in Iraq after fleeing Afghanistan, but no context was given as to who gave him this assistance and where, so we might have to wait until he has been captured and interrogated before we find out. I also find it interesting that there were no major terrorist attacks anywhere during the 6 weeks or so of war, and the only Iraqi connected attacks before the war were some minor and mostly ineffective attempts in places like Romania and the Philippines. There were the documents that the Telegraph found that showed connections between Iraq and Bin Ladin in early 1998, although this was before the East Africa bombings.
Al-Qaeda did not work with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, two of the terrorist network's senior leaders have told the CIA, intelligence officials say. Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda planner and recruiter who was captured in March 2002, told interrogators last year that such co-operation had been discussed among the group's leaders, but was rejected by Osama bin Laden. The al-Qaeda chief had vetoed the idea because he did not want to be beholden to Saddam, Zubaydah said. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's chief of operations who was captured in Pakistan on March 1, has also said in a debriefing that the group did not work with Saddam. The Bush Administration has not made these statements public, although it has frequently highlighted intelligence reports supporting its claims of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda as it made its case for war. A CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, declined to comment on what the two al-Qaeda leaders said. Another senior intelligence official played down their debriefings, saying statements by captured al-Qaeda operatives must be regarded with scepticism.
That's true enough, Zubaydah has certainly lied plenty of times. I would expect that in the coming months the CIA, DIA etc. will be busy translating documents and interviewing former Mukhabarat agents |