"Did Saddam Hussein's inner circle and the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan actively court each other in hopes of forging an anti-American alliance in the region?
Ray Robison, a former member of the CIA-directed Iraq Survey Group (ISG), examined efforts by Saddam Hussein to build and hide weapons of mass destruction, and supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit documents and materials of Saddam's regime."
I've been following Ray's work for a while and it's first class. Those who through idiocy continue this "no connection" mantra are going to get their little Kool Aid pumping hearts broken. The fact is while it hasn't been proven that Saddam drove Atta to the airport, nontheless, Saddam had a definate "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" attitude towards Al Qaeda, and as more and more of these documents get translated, the more that connection becomes apparent.
Yet, I'm still not convinced that there was no "direct connect" as regards to Mohammed Atta. In fact there is more evidence FOR than against that assertion - the 9/11 Omission Commission "hole in the wall findings" notwithstanding.
Here is a key point in Ray's analysis:
"Tahir Jalil Habbush al Tikriti came to public attention in December, 2003 when the Telegraph UK reported Terrorist Behind September 11th Strike was Trained by Saddam.
Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.
In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".
Atta, of course, led the 9/11 attacks. It is interesting to note in this new context of an intelligence based relationship between the Taliban and Saddam regime, orchestrated by Pakistani contacts, specifically Maulana Rahman, that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Pakistani passport holder arrested in Pakistan in 2003. It also is worth noting that Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who officials say sent cash to lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, also was arrested in Pakistan with Khalid. Both of these men were arrested in the home of or a member of Pakistan's largest religious political party, Jamaat Islami, of which Maulana Fazlur Rahman is a leader. A further translation from this notebook indicates that in another meeting, again believed to be with the Maulana, joint military training between the Taliban and the Iraqi military is proposed.
Due to the information provided in this notebook, we see a possible secret, intelligence based, operational relationship between the Taliban and the Saddam regime via Maulana Fazlur Rahman. We can discern that the Maulana most likely is meeting with Habbush al Tikriti, implicated in documents published by the Telegraph newspaper in reference to the training of Atta in Iraq. We also have an annotation that indicates Pakistani Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a known bin Laden associate, Al Qaeda terrorist and a 1998 fatwa co-signatory, also was traveling to Iraq in 1999. A further translation from this notebook indicates that in another meeting, again with the Maulana, the Taliban proposes joint military training with the Iraqi military."
Then that takes us back to Atta in Prague.More to come...
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