There Are None So Blind...

Stephen F. Hayes & Thomas Joscelyn have an article in the Weekly Standard that thoroughly documents the Iraq - Al Qaeda connection--"The Mother of All Connections":

Indeed,
more than two years after the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was ousted, there is much we do not know about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. We do know, however, that there was one. We know about this relationship not from Bush administration assertions but from internal Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) documents recovered in Iraq after the war--documents that have been authenticated by a U.S. intelligence community long hostile to the very idea that any such relationship exists.

We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television. We know from IIS documents that a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden's longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members "with open arms" before the war, that they "entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation," and that the regime "strictly and directly" controlled their activities. We have been told by Jordan's King Abdullah that his government knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents from Zarqawi's group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell. We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin Laden's top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999.

All of this is new--information obtained since the fall of the Hussein regime. And yet critics of the Iraq war and many in the media refuse to see it.

The article is a long and detailed one that I urge everyone to read. What is most astonishing to me is how this information is not just being downplayed, but is being totally ignored by the major media in this country. You can hear their mantra repeated over and over again--from the TV screen to the Lefty blogs, to the robotic trolls commenting in blogs that try to bring up the points that Hayes has been making for a while (he wrote The Connection, documenting the Iraq - Al Qaeda link over a year ago). "There is NO connection," they shout, as if they have definitive proof that Saddam could not possibly have any ties with Osama.

You can understand their fanatical determination to discredit all evidence and insist that no connection ever could possiblyunder any circumstances have existed--particularly since the proof offered by Hayes completely undermines their ENTIRE argument against the war in Iraq. And they can't possibly want that war to be justified, because then the evil Bushitler would have done the right thing by taking Saddam out. Unfortunately for them, Bush did exactly the right thing in taking Saddam out even if there hadn't been a connection. But they will never admit that.

There are none so blind as those who will not see, or hear, or read, or think.