Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [227]
Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa’ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression.
Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa’ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
We have credible reporting that al-Qa’ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qa’ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.15
Tenet, the CIA, and members of the Bush administration were certainly not the only ones thinking about possible linkages. A few hours after the 9/11 attack, James Woolsey, CIA director under President Clinton, raised the question of whether Saddam was involved.16 ABC News, the Guardian newspaper, and other media outlets floated similar questions prominently. Their queries were not unreasonable. At the time Saddam was offering twenty-five-thousand-dollar bonuses to the families of suicide bombers to encourage them to attack Israel. He allowed terrorist groups such as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Palestine Liberation Front, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Arab Liberation Front to operate within Iraq’s borders.17 During the 1990s, terrorists supported by Saddam struck in Rome and Vienna, killing Americans and Israelis. Saddam gave refuge to terrorists on the run, like Abu Nidal, whose group was responsible for some nine hundred deaths and casualties, including a number of Americans, in attacks in more than twenty countries.18 Abu Abbas, who hijacked the cruise liner Achille Lauro and murdered an American citizen, Leon Klinghoffer, was living openly and safely in Baghdad.
Documents discovered after the coalition’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 shed more light on the depth of the regime’s linkages with terrorism. As far back as January 1993, for example, Saddam had ordered the formation of “a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia.”19 Saddam used his paramilitary group, the Fedayeen Saddam, to train thousands of terrorists to be deployed both inside and outside of Iraq’s borders.20 While the idea of Iraq working with al-Qaida to inflict harm on the United States did not seem to be much of a stretch, in my public remarks I stayed close to the CIA’s official assessment.
My concerns about Iraq went beyond Saddam’s support of terrorism or any involvement with al-Qaida. It went beyond his savage oppression and genocidal acts against his own people. My view rested on the fact that previous attempts to reduce the risks Saddam posed had failed. The UN sanctions that had checked Iraqi ambitions in the 1990s were crumbling. Further, the sanctions were punishing the Iraqi people more than they were disadvantaging Saddam Hussein and, as a result, international support for the sanctions had waned. Saddam’s belligerence was one of the main reasons we had kept U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, which had fueled bin Laden’s propaganda. Saddam’s long record of aggression and regional ambition were not in doubt, and there were no indications that he had changed. If anything, Saddam seemed emboldened by a decade of UN and American acquiescence. It was increasingly clear that Iraq’s continued defiance of the United Nations would further weaken that institution and encourage other dangerous regimes to follow suit.
In the aftermath of 9/11 and our changed global environment, I wanted updated thinking about U.S. interests and options. I asked Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, to consider the broader principles involved, not just Iraq’s history under Saddam. Among other questions, I asked: What steps should the United States consider taking—when, and with whom? Is it proper to act alone? What about the argument that we should try to obtain approval from the UN Security Council? When is it reasonable to conclude that all means short of war have been tried and