Tag Archives: Osama Bin Laden

Busted: Muslim charity leader in Chicago charged with funding terrorism

A federal grand jury indicted the leader of a major Muslim charity for allegedly financing Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist group.

The charges against Enaam Arnaout, longtime head of the Chicago-based Benevolence International Foundation who has been in jail since April, “are the government’s gravest criminal charges against any Islamic charitable official since the war on terror began,” according to the Washington Post.

Documents captured in Bosnia appear to show that the Benevolence Foundation had close ties to al Qaeda since the terrorist group’s founding in 1988.

The case adds new weight to concerns that ostensibly “mainstream” groups purporting to represent Americans of Arab descent or Muslim heritage are indeed operational fronts and controlled organizations for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Many of those groups loudly protested federal crackdowns on alleged terrorist fronts over the past 11 months, but they are strangely silent about this week’s grand jury indictment.

The case against Saddam (III):There is an ‘Al Qaeda connection’

(Washington, D.C.): One of the most insidious arguments against President Bush’s policy of regime change in Iraq is rooted in the contention that his Iraq initiative is a diversion from, or at least unwarranted by, the war on terror. In fact, there is considerable evidence that Saddam Hussein has long been associated with and been willing to support, facilitate and otherwise exploit terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.

In a previous Security Forum, the Center for Security Policy called attention to a recent compilation of such evidence published by Micah Morrison on the 5 September op.ed. pages of the Wall Street Journal.1 Another important contribution to the body of public information linking Saddam and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda appeared in the New Yorker last March as part of Jeffrey Goldberg’s chilling account of the Butcher of Baghdad’s slaughter of Iraq’s Kurds.

Stephen Hayes has helpfully distilled the essence of this further evidence in an essay in the current edition of the Weekly Standard. The question Mr. Hayes properly poses — and one that should be rigorously explored by the special congressional panel performing a post- mortem on the September 11th attacks — is not whether there is a connection between Saddam and bin Laden and his ilk that fully justifies dealing with the Iraqi despot as the next front in the war on terror. Rather it is: Why is George Tenet’s CIA so determined to conceal, downplay or dissemble about that connection?

Why Can’t the CIA Keep Up with the New Yorker?

by Stephen F. Hayes

Weekly Standard, 13 September 2002


IN WHAT SHOULD go down as one of the most under-discussed revelations of the war on terrorism, an unnamed “senior counterterrorism official” told the Washington Post Tuesday that the CIA is aware of credible reports documenting Saddam-al Qaeda coordination in northern Iraq, but hasn’t checked them out.

Someone remind me why George Tenet still has a job.

In March, the New Yorker ran an exhaustive–16,000 words–account by Jeffrey Goldberg detailing the plight of the Kurds in Northern Iraq. It was an extraordinary piece of journalism–the kind that journalism awards are created to recognize. I distributed the article to dozens of friends and colleagues. It turned Iraq doves into hawks, and skeptics about a war there into believers.

I was sure it would have a more significant impact, too, triggering immediate investigations by the intelligence-gathering agencies that exist to protect us. I was wrong.

Goldberg interviewed several prisoners held by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two rival Kurdish factions in the north. The prisoners related an intricate web of coordination between an al Qaeda splinter group and Saddam’s intelligence service, the Mukhabarat.

Goldberg: “The allegations include charges that Ansar al-Islam has received funds directly from Al Qaeda; that the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with Al Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam; that Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of Al Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992; that a number of Al Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam; and that Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan. If these charges are true, it would mean that the relationship between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda is far closer than previously thought.”

Goldberg sprinkled his prose with caveats–about the possible motivations of the Kurds, about the differing agendas of Saddam and Islamic radicals. That skepticism made his account more credible. But what ultimately made the report convincing was the detail. Goldberg named the prisoners, he explained their relationships, he recreated their battles, and he described their travels. In short, his work is verifiable.

Which is why the Kurds invited him to interview the prisoners in the first place–they hoped it might arouse the interest of U.S. intelligence. “The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. haven’t come out yet,” reported the PUK’s director of intelligence. His deputy added, “Americans are going to Somalia, the Philippines, I don’t know where else, to look for terrorists. But this is the field, here.”

In early July, an hour-long PBS documentary that aired on Wide Angle corroborated much of the reporting in Goldberg’s piece–once again with names, dates, etc. I was sure that whatever their past failings, as the administration pointed itself squarely in the direction of war with Iraq, our revamped, refocused intelligence services would be all over this information, for while the case for removing Saddam Hussein is compelling without any direct link to al Qaeda, and sources in the Bush administration made clear months ago that this case would center on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, might it not be worth merely investigating a Saddam-al Qaeda link? Especially as our potential allies began lining up against military action?

Apparently not. As the Washington Post reports: “The Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, an anti-Hussein group in northern Iraq, says it has jailed 15 to 20 al Qaeda members and was surprised that no one from the U.S. government has come to interrogate them. One senior counterterrorism official confirmed that the CIA knew of the detentions and that U.S. officials have not interrogated the prisoners. ‘We really don’t know whether they are under al Qaeda or Saddam’s control,’ the official said. ‘Ansar trained in Afghan camps. They used Afghanistan as their headquarters. It’s tough to nail down the other details. It’s not implausible that they are working with Saddam. His intel links into northern Iraq are very strong.'”

But it’s not that “tough to nail down the other details.” Jeffrey Goldberg did it. PBS documentarians did it.

Why hasn’t the CIA?



1See the Center for Security Policy’s Security Forum entitled “The Case Against Saddam (I): The Terror Connection” (No. 02-F 31, 9 September 2002).

The Case Against Saddam (I): The Terror Connection

(Washington, D.C.): In the emerging debate over the need to effect regime change in Iraq, one of the opponents’ most frequently heard arguments rests on the claim that there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the war on terror. In making this assertion, some critics aver that they would, of course, support action against Saddam if such a connection could be established. Those who may still remain opposed presumably appreciate that the American people would be even more supportive than they presently are if evidence tying the Iraqi despot to terrorist attacks on this country were established.

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal has done a singular service by dedicating most of its contents on Thursday to a tour de force by Micah Morrison in which he catalogues just the sort of evidence the critics contend is needed. Entitled “The Iraq Connection,” the Morrison essay describes important forensic research done by two intrepid private citizens: Dr. Laurie Mylroie, a long-time member of the Center’s National Security Advisory Council, and Jayna Davis, a former television reporter in Oklahoma City.

These two women have compiled impressive, if circumstantial, cases that Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services may have been involved in — if not principally responsible for — the first attack of the World Trade Center and the truck-bombing of the Murrow building in Oklahoma. In Dr. Mylroie’s case, the evidence fills an entire book on the subject released last year by AEI Press, entitled Study in Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War against America.

Like Saddam’s apparent connections to the September 11th attacks, the evidence linking the Butcher of Baghdad to these murderous acts of terror may be insufficient to convict him in an American court of law under the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard. It is, however, precisely the kind of evidence — fragmentary, inconclusive, probably unpersuasive to those who steadfastly oppose action against Iraq — that one should expect to find in operations for which the chief sponsor is determined to conceal his responsibility.

As part of the case for liberating Iraq, the evidence compiled by Dr. Mylroie and Ms. Davis, and so helpfully chronicled by the Journal, represents an important part of the casus belli.

The Iraq Connection


By Micah Morrison

The Wall Street Journal, 5 September 2002

OKLAHOMA CITY — With the Sept. 11 anniversary upon us and President Bush talking about a “regime change” in Iraq, it’s an apt time to look at two investigators who connect Baghdad to two notorious incidents of domestic terrorism. Jayna Davis, a former television reporter in Oklahoma City, believes an Iraqi cell was involved in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building here. Middle East expert Laurie Mylroie links Iraq to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, and has published a book on the subject.

Both cases are closed, of course — in the public mind if not quite officially. Timothy McVeigh was convicted of murder in the Oklahoma City bombing and executed in June 2001; Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy and manslaughter, and faces a further trial on murder charges. In the World Trade Center bombing, prosecutors convicted six men of Middle Eastern origin on the theory that they operated in a “loose network.” One suspect remains at large, but the apparent ringleader, known as Ramzi Yousef, was captured in Pakistan and is now in federal prison in the U.S.

The prosecutors in both episodes believe they got their men, and of course conspiracy theories have shadowed many prominent cases. Still, the long investigative work by Ms. Davis and Ms. Mylroie, coming to parallel conclusions though working largely independently of each other, has gained some prominent supporters. Former CIA Director James Woolsey, for example, recently told the Journal that “when the full stories of these two incidents are finally told, those who permitted the investigations to stop short will owe big explanations to these two brave women. And the nation will owe them a debt of gratitude.”

The Vanishing John Doe No. 2

Ms. Davis, for example, has a copy of a bulletin put out by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol immediately after the Murrah bombing. It specifies a blue car occupied by “Middle Eastern male subject or subjects.” According to police radio traffic at the time, also obtained by Ms. Davis, a search was on as well for a brown Chevrolet pickup “occupied by Middle Eastern subjects.” When an officer radioed in asking if “this is good information or do we really not know,” a dispatcher responded “authorization FBI.” Law-enforcement sources tell Ms. Davis that the FBI bulletin was quickly and mysteriously withdrawn.

The next day, the federal government issued arrest warrants and sketches of two men seen together, John Doe No. 1 and No. 2. John Doe 1 turned out to be McVeigh, who was quickly picked up on an unrelated charge. Following the arrest of McVeigh and Nichols, the Justice Department changed course, saying the witnesses were confused and there was no John Doe 2 with McVeigh.

But Ms. Davis, who was covering the case at the time for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, says in fact there was a John Doe No. 2, and that she has identified him. The original warrant for John Doe No. 2 described a man about 5 feet 10 inches, average weight, with brown hair and a tattoo on his left arm. She says the man matching this description is an Iraqi political refugee named Hussain al-Hussaini, an itinerant restaurant worker who entered the country in 1994 from a Saudi Arabian refugee camp and soon found his way to Oklahoma City. She says she has more than 20 witnesses who can place him near the Murrah Building on the day of the bombing or finger him in parts of the conspiracy.

Seven weeks after the bombing, Ms. Davis’s KFOR television station began broadcasting a series of reports on a possible Middle East connection. It did not name Mr. al-Hussaini, but did include photographs of him that digitally obscured his face. Mr. al-Hussaini sued for libel and defamation, denying any association with the bombing. In November 1999, U.S. District Court Judge Tim Leonard dismissed the lawsuit.

Citing defense contentions Mr. al-Hussaini’s counsel failed to dispute, the judge ruled that Ms. Davis had proved that Mr. al-Hussaini “bears a strong resemblance to the composite sketch of John Doe #2,” including a tattoo on his left arm, that he was born and raised in Iraq, that he had served in the Iraqi army, and that his Oklahoma City employer had once been suspected by the federal government of having “connections with the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

Mr. al-Hussaini appealed Judge Leonard’s decision to the 10th Circuit Court, where a ruling is pending. He is represented by Gary Richardson, a well-known Oklahoma lawyer who currently is an independent candidate for governor. In an interview, Mr. Richardson denounced the treatment of Mr. al-Hussaini as anathema to American values, saying he had been singled out because he was an Arab. “There is no evidence that Hussain al-Hussaini is John Doe No. 2,” Mr. Richardson said. “He was grossly mistreated by the media in Oklahoma.”

In 1996, Mr. al-Hussaini returned to Boston, where he had first entered the U.S. He found work as a cook at Logan Airport. According to his medical records, he was haunted by the Oklahoma City episode and the publicity surrounding his libel suit. He began drinking heavily and in 1997 was admitted to a psychiatric clinic for a depressive disorder and suicidal thoughts. Mr. al-Hussaini’s lawyer says his client has since moved to another part of the country and is “trying to put his life back together.”

According to notes taken by a nurse at the psychiatric clinic, Mr. al-Hussaini quit his job at Logan Airport in November 1997, nearly four years before planes from there were hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Her notes say he stated, “If anything happens there, I’ll be a suspect.”

Evidence supporting Ms. Davis’s suspicions surfaced during discovery for the McVeigh trial. An FBI report, for example, records a call a few hours after the bombing from Vincent Cannistraro, a retired CIA official who had once been chief of operations for the agency’s counter-terrorism center. He told Kevin Foust, a FBI counter-terror investigator, that he’d been called by a top counter-terror adviser to the Saudi royal family. Mr. Foust reported that the Saudi told Mr. Cannistraro about “information that there was a ‘squad’ of people currently in the United States, very possibly Iraqis, who have been tasked with carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States. The Saudi claimed that he had seen a list of ‘targets,’ and that the first on the list was the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.”

Stephen Jones, McVeigh’s lead lawyer, discusses the FBI report in his book, “Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy.” Mr. Cannistraro later told Mr. Jones that he didn’t know if the caller “was credible or not.” But Mr. Foust’s memo says Mr. Cannistraro described the Saudi official as “responsible for developing intelligence to help prevent the royal family from becoming victims of terrorist attacks,” and someone he’d known “for the past 10 or 15 years.”

Ms. Davis’s evidence was examined by Patrick Lang, a Middle East expert and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s human intelligence collection section. In a memo to Ms. Davis, Mr. Lang concluded that Mr. al-Hussaini likely is a member of Unit 999 of the Iraqi Military Intelligence Service, or Estikhabarat. He wrote that this unit is headquartered at Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad, and “deals with clandestine operations at home and abroad.”

Larry Johnson, a former deputy director of the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, also has examined Ms. Davis’s voluminous research. “Looking at the Jayna Davis material,” Mr. Johnson says, “what’s clear is that more than Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols were involved. Without a doubt, there’s a Middle Eastern tie to the Oklahoma City bombing.”

Mr. al-Hussaini and other former Iraqi soldiers colluded with McVeigh and Nichols in the attack, Ms. Davis charges. “There is a Middle Eastern terrorist cell operating in Oklahoma City. They were operating prior to the Oklahoma City bombing and they are still operating today.”

The popular stereotype of McVeigh is of a twisted “patriot” out to avenge government actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. But in March 1998 he penned a prison-cell “Essay on Hypocrisy” obsessed with Iraq. “We’ve all seen pictures that show a Kurdish woman and child frozen in death from the use of chemical weapons. But have you ever seen these pictures juxtaposed next to pictures from Hiroshima or Nagasaki?” With calls for war crimes trials of Saddam Hussein, “why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible for even greater amounts of ‘mass destruction?'”

In dismissing the al-Hussaini libel suit, Judge Leonard pointedly noted the indictment of McVeigh and Nichols included a charge of conspiracy “with others unknown.” In sentencing Nichols, U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch remarked, “It would be disappointing to me if the law enforcement agencies of the United States government have quit looking for answers.”

World Trade Center

The Sept. 11 airline crashes were not the first attempt to topple the World Trade Center towers. In February 1993, a bomb blast in a public parking garage below the North Tower of the World Trade Center killed six people and left a crater six stories deep. It could have been much worse. In her book, “The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks,” Laurie Mylroie says that the bomb was designed to topple the North Tower into the South Tower and envelop the scene in a cloud of cyanide gas. Hearing the case, Judge Kevin Duffy agreed, saying that if the plan had worked, “we would have been dealing with tens of thousands of deaths.” After the bombing, the FBI rounded up four Muslims who moved in extremist circles in the New York area. Three others escaped overseas: a Palestinian, an Iraqi named Abdul Yasin, and Ramzi Yousef.

Ms. Mylroie’s book argues that Iraq was complicit in this attack. At the very least, she notes, Saddam Hussein is harboring a wanted terrorist: Abdul Yasin. He came to the U.S. six months before the Trade Center attack and is charged with helping mix chemicals for the bomb. Picked up in an early sweep after the bombing, he talked his way out of an FBI interrogation and turned up back in Baghdad.

Beyond this, Ms. Mylroie contends that the bombing was “an Iraqi intelligence operation with the Moslem extremists as dupes.” She says that the original lead FBI official on the case, Jim Fox, concluded that “Iraq was behind the World Trade Center bombing.” In late 1993, shortly before his retirement, Mr. Fox was suspended by FBI Director Louis Freeh for speaking to the media about the case; he died in 1997. Ms. Mylroie says that Mr. Fox indicated to her that he did not continue to pursue the Iraq connection because Justice Department officials “did not want state sponsorship addressed.”

According to phone records analyzed by Ms. Mylroie, Abdul Yasin appeared in the orbit of one of U.S. conspirators, Muhammed Salameh, some weeks after Mr. Salameh made a series of phone calls to relatives in Iraq, including to his uncle, Kadri Abu Bakr. Mr. Bakr is a senior figure in the PLO’s “Western Sector” terrorist unit; at the very least, his phone calls would be monitored by Iraqi intelligence.

Ramzi Yousef also showed up after the calls to Mr. Bakr, according to Ms. Mylroie’s analysis. His arrival “transformed the conspiracy from a pipe bombing plot to an audacious attack on the World Trade Center.” Yousef was “the individual most responsible for building the World Trade Center bomb” — 1,200 pounds of urea nitrate with a nitroglycerine trigger, booster chemicals, sulfuric acid and sodium cyanide.

After the bombing, Yousef vanished; he had entered with an Iraqi passport, and exited with a Pakistani passport. Yousef’s Pakistani passport was in the name of Abdul Basit. He obtained it from the Pakistani consulate in New York shortly before the bombing, saying he had lost his passport and presenting photocopied pages from Abdul Basit’s 1984 and 1988 passports.

Ms. Mylroie says her evidence suggests that Abdul Basit and his family were among two dozen Pakistani nationals working in Kuwait who vanished at the time of the Iraqi invasion. Law enforcement authorities believe she overplays this possibility, that Yousef is indeed Basit, and that the original Iraqi passport is the only firm link to Iraq.

After fleeing in the wake of the 1993 bombing, Yousef/Basit made his way to the Philippines, where he planted a bomb that killed the passenger taking his seat after he disembarked from a plane on the island of Cebu. Police investigating a fire in a Manila apartment he occupied found a laptop computer with plans to bomb 12 U.S. jets simultaneously. Yousef escaped but was later apprehended in Pakistan and turned over to U.S. authorities. He was convicted in both the Trade Center attack and the plane-bombing plot.

One of Yousef’s confederates, Abdul Hakin Murad, was arrested at the Manila apartment and later convicted in the U.S. in the plane plot. While in custody in the Philippines, he told investigators that he and Yousef had discussed hijacking a jet and crashing it into CIA headquarters. According to a January 1995 Manila police report, Murad said “he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters. There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute.”

The Philippine Connection

Astonishingly, the Murrah bombing and the first WTC attack share a connection. Yousef and Terry Nichols were in the Philippines simultaneously. Nichols’s trips there are undisputed; his wife’s relatives lived in Cebu City. Cebu is also the territory of the Islamic terrorist group Abu Sayyaf. McVeigh lawyers sought to substantiate an “others unknown” defense theory, and made extensive filings concerning Nichols’s activities there.

These filings show that he was often in Cebu without his wife, and that he was in frequent contact with Ernesto Malaluan, a relative of his wife who had once lived in Saudi Arabia and owned a boarding house in Cebu City. The filing asserted that his boarding house “shelters students from a university well known for its Islamic militancy.”

A defense examination of phone records found that Nichols had repeatedly called the Cebu boarding house in the weeks preceding the bombing. Some of the calls were billed to a prepaid phone card to which McVeigh also had access. The calls were often made from pay phones at truck stops and the like, and sometimes followed mysterious patterns. In one instance, for example, the same number was dialed nine times in nine minutes before someone answered and spoke for 14 minutes.

The McVeigh defense also produced two witnesses, Nichols’s father-in-law and a resort worker, who said that while in the Philippines, Nichols had asked them if they knew anyone who knew “how to make bombs.”

The defense team also obtained a statement from Philippines law-enforcement officials about a meeting of Nichols and Yousef. The statement was given by a putative Abu Sayyaf leader, Edward Angeles. Angeles is a murky figure. Born Ibrahim Yakub and said to be one of the founders of Abu Sayyaf, he surrendered to the Philippine Army in 1995, claiming he had been all the time a deep penetration agent for the government. Angeles was assassinated in 1999 by unknown gunmen.

The McVeigh defense filings portray the Nichols link to the Cebu City boarding house, Ramzi Yousef and Abu Sayyaf as grounds for believing that bomb-making expertise may have been passed to Nichols through “Iraqi intelligence based in the Philippines.” McVeigh attorney Stephen Jones told Insight magazine recently that six months before the Oklahoma City bombing, “Tim couldn’t blow up a rock. Then Terry goes to the Philippines,” and their bomb-making skills take a great leap forward. The court did not grant Mr. Jones’s request to comb through U.S. intelligence files in search of an Iraq connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Sept. 11 Footnotes

The principal reason for suspecting an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks is of course the much-discussed report of a meeting in Prague on April 8, 2001, between apparent hijacking leader Mohamed Atta and Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat expelled as a spy shortly thereafter. Press reports have repeatedly cast doubt on these reports, apparently because the FBI located Atta in Virginia and Florida shortly before and after the meeting and found no record of his leaving the U.S. But the latest report, in the Aug. 2 edition of the Los Angeles Times, quotes a high Bush administration official as saying evidence of the meeting “holds up.” In the face of doubts and denials, Czech officials have repeatedly maintained that they’re sure the meeting took place. Atta also passed through Prague on his way to the U.S. in June of 2000, returning a second time after being refused entry for lack of a visa.

There are also reports of various contacts between Iraqis and the al Qaeda terrorist network, notably a 1998 visit to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan by Saddam Hussein’s deputy head of military intelligence at the time, Faruq al-Hijazi. In congressional testimony in March, CIA Director George Tenet noted that Iraq has “had contacts with al Qaeda,” adding that “the two sides mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family suggest that tactical cooperation between them is possible.”

Espionage writer Edward Jay Epstein has pointed out that of the eight pilots and co-pilots of hijacked planes on Sept. 11, none got off a distress call. What we know of the incidents came from stewardesses and flyers with cell phones. Commercial satellite photos show the body of an airliner at Salman Pak, where the Iraqis are thought to maintain terrorist training camps. One Iraqi defector, Sabah Khalifa Alami, has stated that Iraqi intelligence trained groups at Salman Pak on how to hijack planes without weapons. Mr. Epstein details these connections at his Web site, www.edwardjayepstein.com.

None of this is “hard evidence,” let alone “conclusive evidence,” that Saddam Hussein was complicit in Sept. 11 or any of the other domestic terrorist attacks. But there is quite a bit of smoke curling up from various routes to Baghdad, and it’s not clear that anyone except Jayna Davis and Laurie Mylroie has looked very hard for fire. We do know that Saddam Hussein plotted to assassinate former President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait in April 1993. Could he have been waging a terror offensive against the U.S. ever since the end of the Gulf War? This remains a speculative possibility, but a possibility that needs to be put on the table in a serious way.

Mr. Morrison is a senior editorial page writer at the Journal.

Rumsfeld, DeLay Defend Regime Change in Iraq

Answering critics of the Presidents call for regime change in Iraq who argue that no ties exist between Saddam Hussein and bin Ladens al-Qaeda, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued forcefully during a press briefing yesterday that Iraq continues to harbor al-Qaeda terrorists.

When asked about evidence that Iraq hosted or supported al-Qaeda, Rusmfeld fired back that there are al Qaeda in a number of locations in Iraq. And the suggestion that those people who are so attentive in denying human rights to their population aren’t aware of where these folks are or what they’re doing is ludicrous.

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay followed up Secretary Rumsfelds remarks with an address today on The Imperative of Action. In it DeLay took aim at the Presidents opponents and argued that The costs of inaction [against Iraq] are unacceptable.

DeLay makes clear the stakes in this war when he counters critics’ claim that war with Iraq is a diversion from war on terror. According to DeLay, Defeating Saddam Hussein is a defining measure of whether we will wage the war on terrorism fully and effectively.

Evidence grows that ‘Laurent of Arabia’ has it right: Saudi Arabia is an unreliable ally at best, at worst a real foe

(Washington, D.C.): It is becoming harder and harder to be an apologist for Saudi Arabia. People — including many who should know better — are still trying, to be sure. But the evidence continues to accumulate that confirming the assessment a French RAND analyst by the name of Laurent Murawioc recently gave the Defense Policy Board to the effect that the Saudis are not “with us” in the war on terror.

In the following Wall Street Journal op.ed. article, Simon Henderson chronicled some of the most recent indicators of where Saudi Arabia comes down on the binary, friend-or-enemy choice President Bush on 20 September announced would have to be made by every nation. Surely, as Mr. Henderson notes, “There is perhaps no point in having more enemies than you already have.” Still we ignore the facts about who the enemies we have actually are at our peril.

One can for the moment reserve judgment about the need to exercise the relatively draconian steps Mr. Murawioc deems in order — including seizing the Saudi oil fields — and yet embrace the reality that Saudi Arabia cannot be allowed to continue promoting Wahhabist Islamism around the globe, not least in the United States itself, without incurring American retaliation in an appropriate form.

THE SAUDI WAY

by Simon Henderson

The Wall Street Journal, 12 August 2002

The recent statement by Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister that the U.S. will not be allowed to use Saudi soil to launch an attack on Iraq is further proof that the House of Saud is not our “ally” in the war on terror. Last month’s Defense Policy Board briefing (as reported in the Washington Post) made a good point when it described Saudi Arabia as “active at every level of the terror chain.” The Bush administration’s attempts to distance itself from such statements will prove increasingly difficult as the truth about the Saudi kingdom becomes better known.

Despite the handshakes and diplomatic niceties, it is clear that the “American way” is very different from the “Saudi way.” Under the House of Saud, the people of Saudi Arabia — including foreign workers and visitors — are subjected to juryless trials, lashings and public beheadings. These actions bear no resemblance to American concepts of “inalienable” and constitutional rights. Instead, they reflect what the House of Saud calls “Islamic values.”

A Bargain

Before Sept. 11, the U.S.-Saudi relationship hid behind a veil of obscurity with public attention focused on the simple trade-off of reliable supplies of reasonably priced oil in return for protection against external threats. Most people accepted this bargain.

Since Sept. 11, and the preponderance of Saudis among the hijackers and those detained at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has assumed a new, more sinister aspect. Even in the past, it was not a liaison that stood up well to public scrutiny. Now it certainly does not.

The Saudi way of public diplomacy is to deny everything; for months Interior Minister Prince Nayef simply said the Sept. 11 hijackers had stolen Saudi identities. For the less gullible, the Saudi style is to spin, and if that doesn’t work, spin some more. The Saudi line on why so many Saudis were involved in the attacks is that Osama bin Laden wanted to strain the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Nice spin. Anyone questioning Saudi involvement in Sept. 11 can be accused of doing bin Laden’s bidding.

But there is much more to the links between the hijackers and the House of Saud than many are willing to admit. A Jan. 9 story in U.S. News & World Report, entitled “Princely Payments,” provided a lead which few have followed up. Two unidentified Clinton administration officials told the magazine that two senior Saudi princes had been paying off Osama bin Laden since a 1995 bombing in Riyadh, which killed five American military advisers. A Saudi official was quoted as saying, “Where’s the evidence? Nobody offers proof. There’s no paper trail.”

I followed the lead and quickly found U.S. and British officials to tell me the names of the two senior princes. They were using Saudi official money — not their own — to pay off bin Laden to cause trouble elsewhere but not in the kingdom. That is “the Saudi way.” The amounts involved were “hundreds of millions of dollars,” and it continued after Sept. 11. I asked a British official recently whether the payments had stopped. He said he hoped they had, but was not sure.

There is a logic to this “Saudi way,” at least from a Saudi point of view. It will offer little comfort to those who lost loved ones on Sept. 11. Paying off bin Laden might be the simplest and least bloody way of dealing with the threat of Islamic extremism, at least in Saudi Arabia.

Does this make Saudi Arabia an enemy or an ally? Again, our logic says an enemy. But the fuss over Foreign Minister Prince Saud’s statement and the Defense Policy Board briefing actually works in the Saudis’ favor. By inching closer towards conservative Islam, the House of Saud hopes it will find support from the majority of the kingdom’s population, which, according to reports as recently as a few months ago, overwhelmingly supports bin Laden.

Why doesn’t the Bush administration admit the difficulties with the Saudis and complain about the complicity between senior princes and bin Laden? Diplomacy, like politics, is the art of the possible. There is perhaps no point in having more enemies than you already have. But the split is not something that can be hidden forever. A major problem is that Washington is no longer sure who within the House of Saud to deal with.

Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler, who met President Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April, was not one of the princes who was paying off bin Laden. The ailing King Fahd is in Geneva, dying according to some, having last-gasp medical attention according to others. But while he is there, Abdullah lacks complete authority. Two weeks ago, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak went to visit Fahd in what was interpreted by some observers as a slight to Abdullah.

Rumors of schisms within the royal family abound. King Fahd, along with his fellow full brothers in the “Sudairi Seven,” including Defense Minister Prince Sultan and Interior Minister Prince Nayef, are now said to be more wary of the U.S. relationship than Abdullah is. Sultan is in line to be king after Abdullah; Nayef would follow afterwards. Often it seems that the Sudairis are keeping Fahd alive in order to deny the 79-year-old Abdullah the throne. The Saudi system is such that if Abdullah becomes feeble or ill, he will be passed over.

Some reports suggest that the royal family infighting has become vicious. A junior prince died in a car accident in the desert, another had a heart attack, a third lost a long struggle against drug and alcohol abuse. It is hard to tell whether this is just normal attrition among the cadre of 5,000-plus princes or something else.

Will “the Saudi way” cope with the strains in the U.S. relationship and the apparent gridlock in decision-making in the kingdom? We are in new territory. Already the kingdom has allowed itself to lose its position as principal supplier of imported oil to the U.S. (That position was lost in the last quarter of 2001, despite Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar spinning the line that the kingdom was sending extra oil as a gesture of support following Sept. 11.)

In the last two weeks, it has become apparent that talks on the opening of Saudi gas fields to energy majors like ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch/Shell and BP were deadlocked. The kingdom apparently did not want to give the impression that it needed foreigners to build the desalination plants and power generation units that the Saudi people so desperately need. Brownouts often occur in major cities and a stink of sewage pervades many residential areas of the capital.

While putting up barriers for U.S. action against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Riyadh is taking a calculated risk that it no longer needs U.S. security guarantees. The other traditional part of the oil relationship has changed also. In the preliminary talks before the Crawford summit, the Saudis threatened to cut off oil exports for two months unless U.S. policy supporting Israel was changed. (This did not, of course, stop Saudi officials from claiming they would never use oil as a political weapon. More spin.)

Like Iran?

Saudi Arabia appears to be heading in the direction of fundamentalist Iran, deliberately distancing itself from foreigners and being a hindrance rather than a help to the U.S. The royal family no doubt hopes this will enable them to continue to rule — they have no interest in Arabia becoming a republic.

For Washington, the assumption must be that Saudi Arabia will continue to fund radical Islam. It is what the Saudis believe in, and what the royal family must allow or risk having its credentials to rule questioned. So money will continue to flow to Hamas and other groups across the Muslim world. The key test will be what is good for Saudi Arabia rather than what might upset the U.S. It is “the Saudi way.”

Mr. Henderson, an adjunct scholar of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, runs saudistrategies.com, a consulting firm.

American Muslim Council officer selects Hamas lawyer in campaign against FBI

Just five weeks after the FBI termed it a “mainstream” organization, the American Muslim Council (AMC) slammed the FBI for questioning its treasurer during a routine airport security check – and announced that its officer had retained a prominent lawyer – who also represents Hamas – as counsel.

The AMC sponsored a news conference in Washington August 6 for its board of directors treasurer Muhammad Ali Khan, along with New York activist attorney Stanley Cohen. Khan is upset because the FBI questioned him last week when he boarded a Northwest flight from Las Vegas to Chicago. The AMC and related groups denounced the questioning as an act of racism and bigotry.

Considered one of the most radical lawyers in the United States, Cohen is a strong supporter of Hamas who has said after September 11 that he would consider representing Osama Bin Laden if the terrorist was ever arrested. The State Department lists Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The AMC announced that Khan had retained Cohen a day after Hamas murdered five Americans in the bombing of an Israeli university cafeteria. Asked at the news conference about the connection, Khan claimed he’d never heard of Hamas.

Cohen shares an office with Lynne Stewart, the lawyer for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the “Blind Sheik”) who is in prison as a convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. Stewart is being tried for aiding the Blind Sheik’s clandestine communications with his terrorist followers in Egypt.

The AMC and related groups denounced the questioning as an act of racism and bigotry, faulting the FBI for asking Khan about terrorism.

The AMC-Hamas lawyer said his goal is to force the FBI to stop maintaining terrorist watch lists.

Click here for a Washington Post profile of Stanley Cohen.

Hearing sddresses Saudi, Egyptian unreliability

(Washington, D.C.): Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. testified today before the House Armed Services Committee Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism in connection with its consideration about one of the most challenging aspects of the war on terror: Assuring that countries who purport to be on our side are not, in fact, engaged in behavior that exacerbates the threat we face today — and the even more dangerous ones we are likely to face in the future.

Of particular interest to the Committee was evidence that Saudi Arabia and Egypt are actually abetting terrorist organizations. The following are excerpts of Mr. Gaffney’s prepared statement. The hearing was taped by C-SPAN and will be broadcast in its entirety at a later date.


With Friends Like These…

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity to contribute to the Committee’s important deliberations on the war on terrorism. I salute you for your personal leadership over many years on matters bearing on the challenges we face today and, in particular, for your willingness to examine with care one of the most vexing of these — namely, the degree to which Middle Eastern nations we have long regarded as friends are materially aiding the terrorists with whom we find ourselves at war.

President Bush has properly said that you are either with us or against us; either you will help us in ridding the world of terrorism or you are part of the problem.

It has been relatively easy to be clear about who is against us. We recognize that the enemy is not just Osama bin Laden and cells of his al Qaeda organization based in Afghanistan. Rather it is a network of terrorists — some of whom are directly associated with al Qaeda, many of whom have less clear-cut connections to bin Laden — that literally spans the globe, from Central Asia to the Philippines, from Colombia to the Middle East……

To fully comprehend the nature of this threat and its sources, it is important to keep in mind that we have seen terrorists and their sponsors cooperating across seemingly insuperable political, ideological and theological divides. For example, there is evidence that secular Ba’athist Iraq has cooperated with Islamist al Qaeda operatives. Irish Republican Army operatives are training the FARC’s narco-terrorist guerillas in Colombia with Cuban and Venezuelan assistance. These relationships give even relatively small cells the capability to have what President Bush has called intolerable “global reach,” making them legitimate targets in our war on terror.

Far more challenging is the task of correctly assessing those who are with us. For example, in the immediate aftermath of September 11, nations with long pedigrees of support for international terrorism — notably, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Yemen — were said to have made some effort to take advantage of a sort of Bush amnesty program to distance themselves from their erstwhile friends.

For instance, Sudan (whose Islamist government allowed Osama bin Laden to live and operate from its territory for five years) has offered us information about him and his lieutenants. Similarly, the Yemenis have been described as exhibiting unprecedented willingness to cooperate in counter-terrorist operations on their soil including arresting individuals it says are implicated in the attack on the USS Cole. These steps have resulted in the dispatch of U.S. personnel to Yemen for training in counter-terrorism techniques, something that would have been hard to imagine in the years prior to 9/11.

To varying degrees Syria, Libya and Iran, were said to be “cooperating” as well. Notably, Iran condemned the September 11th attacks and offered to help any air crews who might be downed over Iranian territory in the course of combat in Afghanistan. State Department officials reportedly argued that such behavior created opportunities for improved American ties with each of these countries, notwithstanding their presence on its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Unfortunately, there is considerable evidence that these countries are playing a double game. Syria continues to host offices for most of the world’s terrorist organizations. And known terrorists continue to operate with impunity on Yemeni soil.

And the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the world’s most inveterate state sponsors of terrorism is not only continuing to support Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad — Islamist terrorist groups bent on destroying Israel. It is also actively subverting America’s efforts to help Afghanistan recover from the years of Taliban and pre-Taliban terror and to prevent the return of al Qaeda.

It would be surprising, indeed, if Pakistan were not acting in a similar fashion. While the steps President Musharaf has taken to support the war effort have been impressive on the whole and hugely valuable to the campaign in Afghanistan, it is certainly possible — if not highly probable — that his Islamist-supporting intelligence service (known as the ISI) is still working at cross-purposes with both him and us. For example, it is likely continuing to encourage bloody attacks in India, confident that by so doing it would create an explosive situation in which Pakistani forces would have to be moved from the border with Afghanistan to the Indian one, thereby easing the pressure on Taliban and al Qaeda elements the ISI previously sponsored who are now trying to operate from Pakistan.

Jordan is in a similar position. Its government under King Abdullah is sympathetic to and anxious to collaborate with the West in combating terror. The present king’s father and predecessor proved himself willing to suppress it at home and to work, albeit quietly, with the Israelis to mitigate threats emanating from Palestinian communities inside both countries. Like King Hussein, Abdullah is evidently going to considerable lengths to cooperate with our government, the Israelis and others fighting terror — even if his public line is, of necessity, more aloof.

The Hashemite king’s ability to ride this tiger can only be made more difficult, however, if the Bush Administration succeeds in creating a Palestinian state on the West Bank of the Jordan River. That would be particularly true if, as seems likely, such a state were to prove to be yet another radical, Islamist and irredentist Arab state — one able and willing to aid and abet terrorist operations from its soil. Such a state would inevitably appeal to Jordan’s Palestinian population to reunite under a single flag, government and army — turning over to very dangerous elements the small but well-equipped and modern Jordanian military. For this reason, among many others, President Bush should be encouraged to reconsider his support for the creation of a state of “Palestine.”…..

A net assessment needs to acknowledge that both the Saudi and Egyptian governments are providing some support to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. Each is allowing important overflight rights of considerable value to the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Central Asia. American warships are being permitted unhindered passage through the Suez Canal. At least some air operations appear to be supported by the Combined Air Operations at the Prince Sultan Air Base…..

Unfortunately, matters are made considerably worse by Saudi and Egyptian behavior on other fronts. Before September 11th, both governments for years actively fomented Islamist and/or pan-Arab sentiment against Israel and the United States. Generally, it was believed that they did so in the interest of deflecting well-deserved popular resentment away from their respective regimes.

In the past, we have turned a blind eye towards such official subversion of our common interests. We clearly can no longer do so now that nineteen Saudi and Egyptian nationals have killed thousands of Americans and others remain engaged in trying to do so.

Yet in important respects, it continues apace. Consider the following, partial but illustrative sampler:



  • The 9/11 hijackers were products of Wahhabist and other Islamist indoctrination. Unfortunately, that radical pedagogy is not limited to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It is promoted by madrassas bankrolled by the Saudis in places like Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and even the United States — where, according to some estimates, the mortgages for as many as 80% of American mosques are held by Saudi financial institutions, etc.


  • State-controlled media in Saudi Arabia and Egypt persist in broadcasting vitriolic anti-American, anti-Israel and/or anti-Western diatribes with themes indistinguishable from bin Laden’s. For example, government dailies in both countries recently ran articles (in Saudi Arabia a two-part “news” item) about how, as the Washington Times reported on 22 March 2002, “Jewish rabbis extract the blood of Christians and Muslims for use in Purim holiday pastries….”


  • Citing “Arab news agencies and the Saudi Embassy’s web site,” UPI reported on 9 April 2002 that “the Saudi Arabian government has paid out at least $33 million to families of Palestinians killed or injured in the…Intifada and in December 2001 earmarked another $50 million for the payments.”


  • Millions more were raised in a Saudi “martython” — a televised spectacle featuring members of the royal family appealing for contributions that would, in effect, reward those whose children or other relatives acted as homicide bombers.


  • The Saudi ambassador to Great Britain, who has served in that post for a decade, recently published in a pan-Arab daily a poem extolling the legitimacy of suicide bombers’ attacks, saying they “died to honor God’s word.” He also complained about “a White House whose heart is filled with darkness.”


  • Published reports quote Saudi activists as saying that members of the royal family support a national boycott against U.S. products in protest of Washington’s support for Israel. Press accounts say this boycott has produced a “sharp drop [by some estimates as much as 30%] in purchases of U.S. imports as well as sales in restaurant chains that stem from the United States” energized by a slogan “with each dollar you pay, you kill a Palestinian.”


  • The South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo reported last year that Egypt had purchased 24 No Dong medium-range missiles to Egypt. Such missiles could be used to deliver chemical, biological or even small atomic weapons to Israel.


  • Agence France Press reported last month that “Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Ebeid said his country would go to war with Israel if Arab countries stumped up $US 100 bllion to pay for the confrontation in an interview…[with] the Abu Dhabi government’s Al-Ittihadi newspaper” published on April 24, 2002.

These examples are meant only to suggest a pattern of bad faith and double-dealing on the part of the Saudi and Egyptian governments that argues, at a minimum, for a far more rigorous insistence on the part of the U.S. government that such “friends” — both of whom enjoy our protection and/or considerable financial assistance — desist from such behavior. I commend you, Mr. Chairman, in particular for your longstanding efforts, of which this hearing is but a part, to end our national practice of “cognitive dissonance” with respect to conduct that should properly cause nations to be seen as “against us.”…..

Mr. Chairman, the war on terror will be tough enough to conduct if we are clear about who are our enemies and who are our reliable friends particularly given the nature of the former and the likelihood that there are far fewer of the latter than we would like. I would argue the list may come down to our fellow democracies — in particular, Great Britain, a few others in Europe, Israel, Turkey, India and the Philippines. The priority missions of taking the war to the enemy, defending ourselves to the extent we can here at home and maintaining popular support for the long term will require great leadership on the part of the President and the Congress and resolute “followership” on the part of the American people.

These missions may be all but impossible to accomplish, however, if we fail to insist that those who are “with us” in the war on terror actually comport themselves in that manner, across the board and not on a selective basis.

FBI links Chicago-area Islamic ‘charity’ to nuclear terrorism and Al Qaeda

An Illinois-based Islamic charity is accused of sponsoring terrorist agents who sought chemical and nuclear weapons material for Osama bin Laden, and who plotted to assassinate Pope John Paul II, according to the FBI.

The Benevolence International Foundation, based near Chicago, is accused of aiding terrorist organizations and sheltering terrorist individuals, including an al Qaeda member currently on trial for conspiring to murder Americans.

The federal government froze Benevolence accounts last December in a bid to shut off terrorist financing. In March, the feds raided facilities associated with Palestinian terrorists in Georgia and Virginia.

The case shows that the FBI and other agencies are benefiting more from collecting intelligence abroad in the crackdown on terrorist support groups. This week’s bust comes despite politically-connected Islamic groups’ protests that the raids are “insensitive” to Muslim Americans.

Federal investigators – who for years didn’t take action against suspected Islamic terrorist support groups for fear of being bashed as racist – are being vindicated for their recent work.

Doug Feith and the real ‘root cause’ of terror

It seemed to many observers last week that the Bush Administration was losing its moral compass in the war on terror. Of particular concern was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s dismal diplomatic foray into the Middle East, a trip predicated on the notion that — when all is said and done — Israel is not entitled to address murderous terrorist cells, and the infrastructure that supports them, by employing the same, lethally violent techniques that the United States is using to deal with Osama bin Laden’s.

Even on those occasions when Mr. Powell found himself compelled to acknowledge the Israelis’ right to defend themselves, he muddled the message by meeting with and thereby legitimating one of the region’s leading terrorists, Yasser Arafat. Worse yet, he committed America to underwriting the reconstruction of the very Palestinian Authority infrastructure that Israel has so recently been compelled to destroy.

Enter Secretary Feith

Fortunately, this week brought a fresh and forceful articulation of what we in the West — the United States, Israel and other civilized nations around the world — are combating in this war, and that for which we are fighting. It was delivered by one of the Administration’s most thoughtful security policy-makers, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and warrants citation here at some length.

In a speech on Sunday before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Secretary Feith said of terrorism involving "the systematic killing of ordinary people going about their lives with their children in shopping malls, on buses, at restaurants" that "it is not politics. It’s not even war. It’s deranged ideology in action. At stake is not just the fate of a particular country, but the fate of all open societies."

He added that, "The suicide bombers who kill Israelis, like those who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon last September 11th, are enemies of the idea of humanity. They may claim to represent a good people or a worthy cause, but they taint the political platforms they embrace. It’s immoral to seek excuses for terrorism and harmful to reward it. So the message of responsible governments should be unwavering: terrorists do not advance their causes; rather, they lose ground."

What It Will Take to ‘Win’

Mr. Feith went on to observe that: "Winning the war requires us to help change the way people think. This can be done. Worldwide moral battles can be fought and won. For example, no decent person any more — no one who hopes to be recognized as respectable in the wider world — supports or excuses slave-trading, piracy or genocide. No decent person should support or excuse terrorism either.

"Our ultimate goal is to change the international environment regarding terrorism — instead of tolerance, an international norm of renunciation and repudiation of terrorism….This is not an abstract, philosophical, academic point, but a strategic purpose of great practical significance."

Worry About Terrorists’ ‘Hopes,’ Not Their Despair

Perhaps the most trenchant aspect of Secretary Feith’s analysis is his insight that "what characterizes the suicide bombers — and especially the old men who send them off on their missions — is rather hope than despair." Such hopes are fed by "the recent outpouring of open support in the Arab world for homicide bombers — from Mrs. Arafat, from a senior Arab diplomat, from clerics associated with prestigious universities — [which] reflects excitement at the thought that bombings are producing success. It is the kind of triumphalism characteristic of a mentality that believes in ‘the worse the better.’"

Don Rumsfeld’s top policy advisor then suggested a three-part "strategic course" that would "attack the sources of these malignant hopes":

  • "Regarding the religious hope: Many Islamic religious leaders seem uncomfortable with suicide bombing — but many of them have been silenced or intimidated to voice support for the terrorists. The civilized world should exert itself to support moderate clerics, defend them and provide them with platforms to protect their religion from extremists who want to distort and hijack it.

    •  

  • "The civilized world should also deal with political leaders who heap honor (and money) on the suicide bombers and their families. President Bush, speaking of suicide bombers, said: "They are not martyrs. They are murderers." Other world leaders have the responsibility to reinforce this message.
  • "Finally, as to the suicide bombers’ political hopes, we must ensure that terrorism is not seen as a winning strategy. This is today’s immediate challenge: For example, we have to make it understood that the Palestinian homicide bombers are harming, not helping, their political cause.

    • The Bottom Line

    Mr. Feith, a former Chairman of the Center for Security’s Board of Advisors, has performed a real service to President Bush and the war he is waging on terrorism. By conceptualizing the "root cause of terrorism" not as poverty but as "the incitement to hatred that creates the intellectual atmosphere in which terrorism can flourish," he has helped to fashion a strategy for restoring coherence and success to the Administration’s global campaign.

    He concluded his remarks before AIPAC by declaring that "Peace can be achieved when the conditions are right: and the most important condition is the state of peoples’ minds….Peace diplomacy in the Middle East has been an intense activity for decades. It’s now clear that we have not focused enough attention on the relationship between peace and education. We spend a great deal of attention on what diplomats say to each other. We need to pay closer attention to what teachers instill in their students. Therein lies the key to peace."

    Amen.

    The War on Terrorism — America’s War and Israel’s

    SPEECH BY DOUGLAS J. FEITH, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POLICY, TO AMERICAN-ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE


    It’s good to have the opportunity once again to address an AIPAC annual conference.


    I’d like to talk with you about the war on terrorism — America’s war and Israel’s war. I’ll take my lead from the current headlines and start with the Middle East.


    Day after day, we read of attacks targeted at Israeli civilians.


    The suicide bombers — or, homicide bombers, as President Bush calls them — have a political cause. But the systematic killing of ordinary people going about their lives with their children in shopping malls, on buses, at restaurants — is not politics. It’s not even war. It’s deranged ideology in action. At stake is not just the fate of a particular country, but the fate of all open societies.


    The intentional mass murder of civilians, including children, forces us to speak in moral terms about basic ideas — about good and evil.


    President Bush states the case starkly: Terrorism is evil.


    The suicide bombers who kill Israelis, like those who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon last September 11th, are enemies of the idea of humanity. They may claim to represent a good people or a worthy cause, but they taint the political platforms they embrace. It’s immoral to seek excuses for terrorism and harmful to reward it. So the message of responsible governments should be unwavering: terrorists do not advance their causes; rather, they lose ground.


    The Palestinian people are long suffering. They have profound grievances against many who have done them harm and served them ill throughout the Middle East, and not just in Israel.


    The Palestinians have been damaged severely for a century or so by leaders who have time and again made disastrous strategic choices — from siding with the Nazis in World War II to siding with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, to siding with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. The question now is: What side are they on in the current global war against terrorism? People always pay a price when their leaders fail them. The Palestinian people have paid, and continue to pay, such a price. It is a tragedy.


    Referring to Yasir Arafat, President Bush has said, “He’s missed his opportunities, and thereby betrayed the hopes of the people he’s supposed to lead. Given his failure, the Israeli government feels it must strike at terrorist networks that are killing its citizens”.


    President Bush then added, “Yet, Israel must understand that its response to these recent attacks is only a temporary measure. All parties have their own responsibilities. And all parties owe it to their own people to act”.


    Despite the current fighting, the President still envisions Israel and the Palestinians achieving a peace by mutual consent. He stresses that this will require compromises and “hard choices” regarding territorial and other claims and desires of Israelis and Palestinians. The achievement of a negotiated peace settlement would bring an end to the issues of legitimacy, borders, settlements and occupation.


    The President has declared, “We have no illusions about the difficulty of the issues that lie ahead. Yet, our nation’s resolve is strong. America is committed to ending this conflict and beginning an era of peace”.


    Many Palestinians say that their aim is to live dignified lives, in freedom, in peace and prosperity in their own state. That goal could be achieved. The U.S. government supports it. Israeli leaders have for years acknowledged that a Palestinian state will be the ultimate outcome of any negotiated peace. As President Bush noted on April 4th, “Israel has recognized the goal of a Palestinian state. The outlines of a just settlement are clear: two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side, in peace and security”.


    But that goal grows increasingly remote as terrorism belies and precludes diplomacy — and darkens the Palestinian people’s future.


    President Bush has called on Israelis to show a respect for and concern about the dignity of the Palestinian people who are and will be their neighbors. It is crucial [the President noted] to distinguish between the terrorists and ordinary Palestinians seeking to provide for their own families”.


    The Palestinians could help themselves by acknowledging that their worst enemies are those who inspire, finance, equip, excuse and otherwise encourage children to commit homicide bombings.


    The major state supporters of terrorism — Iraq, Syria and Iran — offer incentives to encourage such bombings, host terrorist headquarters and supply the arms and explosives. Clerics, who should be faithful trustees of God’s word, violate their trust by legitimating suicide and calling murderers “martyrs.”


    The cult of suicide and murder is sustained through the education of children to hate and to aspire to become suicide bombers. That cult is fostered by those who praise terrorists as “heroes” and those who rationalize terrorism as the understandable act of the politically frustrated. This includes prominent statesmen from many countries who should know better.


    The sad reality is that there are politically frustrated people throughout the Middle East and the broader world. Political, religious and other leaders who craft excuses for terrorism are sowing the wind. It is deadly recklessness.


    The United States is fighting terrorism, using the full range of tools at our disposal, military and non-military. We’ll continue to confront terrorism on the military battlefield, but equally importantly on the battlefield of ideas.


    Winning the war requires us to help change the way people think. This can be done. Worldwide moral battles can be fought and won. For example, no decent person any more — no one who hopes to be recognized as respectable in the wider world — supports or excuses slave trading, piracy or genocide. No decent person should support or excuse terrorism either.


    Our initial victory in Afghanistan deprived al Qaeda of its safe haven and infrastructure there. We daily learn more about that infrastructure — its administrative apparatus, training facilities and laboratories in which al Qaeda worked to develop biological and other weapons of mass destruction.


    For now, at least, the al Qaeda leadership is on the defensive — some are in captivity; the rest are on the run.


    With a few exceptions, such as Iraq, most countries now wish — at least they now profess to wish — to be associated with our global war against terrorism. But at the same time, we see this upsurge in terrorism directed against Israel and brazen public support for anti-Israel terrorism, especially suicide bombings, even from seasoned, sophisticated officials.


    Which brings us to the dangers of intellectual as well as military passivity in the face of terrorism.


    For three decades or so, the world grew tolerant of terrorism. Many belittled the problem: Recall the famous phrase that commonly passed for sophisticated discourse: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Some countries supported terrorism — perhaps not openly, but often without even bothering to cover their tracks. As terrorists racked up a large civilian death toll in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, they and their causes often flourished diplomatically and politically.


    The forces of civilized humanity did not take the offensive against terrorism; rarely went after terrorist groups root and branch; failed to coerce the state sponsors of terrorism to stop; never overthrew a regime because it supported terrorism.


    But September 11th was a turning point. That attack made it clear that the United States and other open societies required a new approach: We recognized that our countries are too big, too open, too full of high-value targets for us to defend them against terrorists. We had to take the offensive.


    The action of US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan has already altered the intellectual atmosphere favorably. Some states that had winked at or even supported terrorism are modifying their policies. In some countries, the policy changes don’t necessarily reflect a change of heart. But in others, such as Pakistan, the changes have been dramatic and appear to signify a true strategic redirection.


    The United States will stay on the offensive against terrorism — targeting the terrorists themselves and, where necessary, coercing the states that support or tolerate them. Much of our work in this war is less dramatic than the liberation of Afghanistan. While other actions may once again involve larger-scale US military operations, our current work around the world, including in the Middle East, involves foreign military anti-terrorism training and international law enforcement, the freezing of bank accounts, intelligence and diplomatic activity and so forth.


    Our ultimate goal is to change the international environment regarding terrorism– instead of tolerance, an international norm of renunciation and repudiation of terrorism. As I said, we want the world to view terrorism as it views piracy, slave trading or genocide — activities universally repudiated by respectable people. This is not an abstract, philosophical, academic point, but a strategic purpose of great practical significance.


    As we continue the US offensive against terrorism, we have in mind not only the more familiar kinds of terrorism.


    As horrifying as September 11th was, the anthrax attacks that occurred later –though small in scale — warned us that terrorists using weapons of mass destruction — biological agents, or chemical, nuclear or radiological weapons — are an even greater threat.


    When he spoke of state supporters of terrorism that are developing weapons of mass destruction, President Bush said in his State of the Union message that, “they could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic”.


    Our goal therefore must be, as the President stated, “to prevent regimes that sponsor terrorism from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction”.


    Also in that speech, President Bush declared, “The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons”.


    So far, I’ve focused on terrorism as a political tool and the danger that terrorists could acquire weapons of mass destruction.


    I’d like to conclude with some thoughts about the sources of terrorism.


    It’s often argued that the phenomenon of suicide bombers — terrorists who perform attacks that they know they cannot survive — demonstrates that we aren’t dealing with people who calculate the benefits and costs of their actions.


    In this vein, we frequently hear that suicide bombing is the product of the combination of poverty and hopelessness.


    Westerners — we whom Usama bin Laden has sneeringly referred to as “lovers of life” — cannot easily understand how a young man (or woman) straps on several pounds of high explosive and then blows himself up in a crowd of civilians. We assume that only a person ensnared in deep despair could do such a thing.


    This diagnosis implies its own solution — that the world should address what is called the “root causes of terrorism,” the poverty and political hopelessness that many people imagine are the traits and motives of the suicide bombers. This diagnosis, however, doesn’t jibe with actual experience. And it blinds us to opportunities we have to confront terrorism strategically.


    When we look at the records of the suicide bombers, we see that many aren’t drawn from the poor. Mohammed Atta, for instance — a key figure in executing the September 11 attack — was a middle-class Egyptian whose parents were able to send him to study abroad. And his education meant that he could look forward to a relatively privileged life in Egypt — hardly grounds for extreme despair.


    Indeed, as we learn from a recent New York Times interview with Hamas leaders in Gaza, what characterizes the suicide bombers — and especially the old men who send them off on their missions — is rather hope than despair:


    First of all, the bombers cherish a perverse form of religious hope. The promise of eternity in paradise is a tenet of many faiths, a noble incentive and consolation to millions of people. It’s as cynical as it is sinister that leaders of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups convince young people that eternity in paradise is available as a reward for the murder of innocents.


    Second, there is the bomber’s hope of earthly glory and reward — praise as a hero from political leaders and honor for one’s parents and a $25,000 check to the bomber’s family from Saddam Hussein. President Bush has condemned, “[t]hose governments, like Iraq, that reward parents for the sacrifice of their children “….


    Those who encourage homicide bombing, as the President said, “are guilty of soliciting murder of the worst kind”.


    Third, there is the homicide bomber’s political hope. As that New York Times interview makes clear, Palestinian extremists think they have finally discovered a winning strategy.


    The recent outpouring of open support in the Arab world for homicide bombers — from Mrs. Arafat, from a senior Arab diplomat, from clerics associated with prestigious universities — reflects excitement at the thought that bombings are producing success. It is the kind of triumphalism characteristic of a mentality that believes in “the worse the better.”


    This suggests a strategic course for us: attack the sources of these malignant hopes.


    Regarding the religious hope: Many Islamic religious leaders seem uncomfortable with suicide bombing — but many of them have been silenced or intimidated to voice support for the terrorists. The civilized world should exert itself to support moderate clerics, defend them and provide them with platforms to protect their religion from extremists who want to distort and hijack it.


    The civilized world should also deal with political leaders who heap honor (and money) on the suicide bombers and their families. President Bush, speaking of suicide bombers, said: “They are not martyrs. They are murderers.” Other world leaders have the responsibility to reinforce this message.


    Finally, as to the suicide bombers’ political hopes, we must ensure that terrorism is not seen as a winning strategy. This is today’s immediate challenge: For example, we have to make it understood that the Palestinian homicide bombers are harming, not helping, their political cause.


    Peace can be achieved when the conditions are right: and the most important condition is the state of peoples’ minds. Thus, we must take seriously the incitement to hatred that creates the intellectual atmosphere in which terrorism can flourish. If we seek the “root cause” of terrorism, this is where we’ll find it.


    Peace diplomacy in the Middle East has been an intense activity for decades. It’s now clear that we have not focused enough attention on the relationship between peace and education. We spend a great deal of attention on what diplomats say to each other. We need to pay closer attention to what teachers instill in their students. Therein lies the key to peace.


    Changing the intellectual fashions in the world regarding terrorism — and ultimately de-legitimating it altogether, without regard to the various causes espoused by the terrorists — won’t be easy. But its importance as a strategic requirement is right up there with the destruction and disruption of terrorist operational infrastructure.


    The Bush administration appreciates the complexity of its tasks — in the war on terrorism and in Middle East diplomacy. The President approaches these tasks with the steadiness and energy appropriate to the magnitude of the stakes.


    We have our nation and its liberties to protect, our friends to assist, and our adversaries to deter and defeat. This is a rare period of flux in world affairs. We have opportunities to do good for ourselves and for others — in the Middle East and other regions of the world — by enhancing security, suppressing terrorism, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, promoting freedom and prosperity and opening paths to peace. The American people expect this administration to rise to the occasion. We shall do our best.


    Thank you.