The Arafat/Saddam/al-Queda nexus

Folks, the following article was forwarded to me from Naomi Ragen. Professor Eidelberg writes about the Arafat/Saddam/al-Queda nexus, with information gleaned from Yossef Bodansky's sensational new book, The Secret History of the Iraq War.   Yes, WMD's exist, yes, there is an evil triumvirate  composed of Arafat/Saddam/al-Queda and yes, Israeli intelligence proving all of these facts were, indeed, repressed.  (All links in this post were added by Smooth Stone) .  From Naomi Ragen:
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Friends,

I met Yossef Bodansky last year. The following article by Professor Eidelberg, with excerpts from Mr. Bodansky's sensational new book, The Secret History of the Iraq War, will amaze you.

Naomi
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The Sucker of Israel: 
Bodansky’s Revelations: Part I By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Israeli-born Yossef Bodansky has been the director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for more than a decade. His latest book, The Secret War of the Iraq War (Harper-Collins 2004), is the basis of this article. Indeed, I will quote extensively from Chapter 3 of his book and inject comments en passant.

Chapter 3 refers to an investigation that had begun in the fall of 2002 in Israel, and which involved the intelligence services of more than six countries. “The investigators’ findings,” writes Bodansky, “provided the ‘smoking gun’ supporting the [Bush] administration’s insistence on Iraq’s centrality to global terrorism, the availability of operational weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and proof of the close cooperation between Iraqi military intelligence and al-Queda.”

The data accumulated during this investigation could have provided the casus belli—the justification for war—and urgent imperative to take on Saddam Hussein. Yet in the first of several indecisive and self-contradicting political maneuvers, the Bush administration preferred to accommodate [Prime Minister Tony] Blair’s pressure to keep Israel at arm’s length, not implicate Arafat [who was working strategically with Saddam], and placate Blair’s fellow West European leaders rather than go public with the findings of the investigation. Despite mounting international criticism and skepticism in the media, the American public was not presented with one of the strongest and most explicit justifications for the war with Iraq (p.51).

Had the public been informed of the Arafat/Saddam/al-Queda nexus—which would conjure in American minds the horror of 9/11—President Bush’s restraints on Israel and even his road map to Palestinian state would have appeared ludicrous. Indeed, exposing that “axis of evil” would have required Bush to encourage Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to eliminate Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in coordination with the war on Iraq.

But now for another Bodansky revelation:

On the night of September 13, 2002, Israeli Special Forces intercepted and captured a three-man squad attempting to cross the Jordan River and enter Palestinian territories [sic] on their way to Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. Their interrogation revealed that they were highly trained members of the Baghdad-based Arab Liberation Front (ALF), sent to conduct spectacular strikes under the banner of Arafat’s Fatah….

The three ALF terrorists were trained for several missions, including an operation that involved shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down civilian airliners as they approached Ben-Gurion Airport and using anti-tank rockets and missiles to ambush convoys—including American groupings on their way to Iraq. They were also to organize and train Palestinian terrorists …

The three had been briefed in Baghdad that they would get the missiles, heavy weapons, and explosives they might need from Fatah via [Tafiq] Tarawi [chief of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service and Arafat’s closest confidant…

The Israel interrogators were most interested in what the three had to say about their training … at Salman Pak—a major base near Baghdad—by members of Unit 999 of Iraqi military intelligence. They recounted that in an adjacent part of the camp, other teams of Unit 999 were preparing a select group of Islamist terrorists specifically identified as members of al-Queda.

The three ALF terrorists told the Israelis that … the Islamists also received elaborate training with chemical weapons and poisons, specifically [the extremely potent poison] ricin. Moreover, the ALF terrorists recounted, Islamist detachments traveled to Turkey, where they were to strike American bases with chemical weapons once the war [on Iraq] started….

Within a week of the capture of the ALF trio, a delegation of senior Israeli intelligence officers traveled to Washington to brief the White House about their findings….

Since the Bush administration was hard-pressed to justify going to war with Iraq, one would think it would readily publicize Israel’s intelligence data. Not at all! The White House, says Bodansky, “was reluctant to advertise this evidence because it demonstrated Israeli intelligence’s major contribution to the war on terrorism.”

Nevertheless, and despite Europe’s pro-Palestinian posture, Israel quietly shared the acquired data with several European governments. This led to the destruction and capture of several Arab and Chechen terrorist networks in Paris and London, as well as support networks in Spain and Italy. As Bodansky sees, “Israel had in fact demonstrated to the Europeans why Saddam Hussein had to be toppled, and soon.” And yet, “most Western European governments adamantly refused to address Iraqi training of al-Queda in the use of chemical weapons and poisons.” But this is not all.

As Bodansky points out, acceptance of the evidence provided by Israel would also acknowledge the intimate involvement of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority in international terrorism. The European governments insisted not only on separating the Palestinians from the war on Iraq, but demanded that the Arab world be compensated for the American-led attack, by forcing Israel to accept a political solution favorable to Arafat, regardless of the extent of Palestinian terrorism! Moreover, Tony Blair led a European effort to salvage Arafat and reward him with a Palestinian state, hoping to demonstrate that the war was not indiscriminately anti-Arab.

As for the Bush administration, “Having to choose between further alienating the Western Europeans, who insisted on keeping Arafat out of the war, and bolstering its case against Iraq by providing concrete Israeli evidence, the White House decided to go with the Europeans …” The Palestinian Authority’s involvement with Iraqi terrorism and weapons of mass destruction was thus hushed up, as was Israel’s contribution to the effort to disarm Iraq.
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Smooth adds:

Yossef Bodansky is the Director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the U. S. Congress, as well as the World Terrorism Analyst with the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (Houston TX). He is a contributing editor of Defense and Foreign Affairs; Strategic Policy, the author of three books (Target America, terror, and crisis in Korea), several book chapters, and numerous articles in several periodicals including Global Affairs, JANE's Defence Weekly, Defense and Foreign Affairs; Strategic Policy, Business Week. In the 1980s, he acted as a senior consultant for the Department of Defense and the Department of State.  Source.