Several documents from the trove of papers liberated from the vaults of Saddam’s intelligence machinery have been translated. Some seem to indicate that AQ was operating with Saddam’s blessings. Others indicate that Saddam’s Fedayeen were trying to discover the activities of some 3,000 arabs that had transversed Iraq to fight for the Taliban.
Whichever turns out to be the real case, and if fact it may turn out that both were the case, it indicates that Iraq was a haven for the enemies of America. Either Saddam knew that AQ was there or he was trying to find out how badly his country was over run, or again perhaps both, and that indicates a degree of instability that was clearly a threat to the region and hence to the US.
I’m inclined to think that AQ was both playing up to Saddam and playing Saddam for a fool.
A picture of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi from the documents can be seen at The Dred Pundit. More information can be seen at Michelle Malkin.
The questions I have are why did it take the Bush Administration so long to release them…and when is he going to bitch slap the Democrats with them? I can see a horde of commercials transposing the Cut and Run Democratstm with translations from the archives of Saddam’s intelligence machinery.