The Iraq War retrospective Thread

[Jester]

You should read the Section 1 of the report on the FAS site. The Iraqi ISS, Feydayeen and Force 999 activities were far beyond your limited vision of " Iraqi intelligence offered some small quantity of money, and a general policy of live-and-let-kill-Kurds". In Iraqi documents there is specific mention of sending the 10 best specially trained Force 999 commando's to London for special missions against Iraqi ex-patriots, British and American interests. The report, which is an analysis of actual Iraqi documents, reveals the full extent of the Saddam regimes links terrorist activities around the world. Now, Saddam was focused on Pan-Arabism, while Al Queda and other Jihadi groups are more Pan-Islamist. But, as is also outlined in the Section 1, that is like the difference between Cali and Medellín drug cartels. While the Iraqi regime was selfishly looking out for its own interests in establishing Iraq as the leader of Pan-Arabism, if their objectives overlapped with others they provided aid, training and support.

... none of which are Ansar Al-Islam, which was my criticism.

Iraqi intelligence had contacts with, and probably off-and-on gave minor support to, various terrorist groups, trained guerilla fighters in terror tactics, and whatnot. However, if this is now a casus belli, you should probably just up and declare war on the entire middle east, because that's true of most countries over there. Indeed, you'd have cause to declare war on yourselves, because the US record for supporting terrorism is far from lily white.

-Jester