BBin Laden may be front for Iraqi campaign, some analysts say

By Jim Landers Knight Ridder News Service Monday, September 17, 2001

Several terrorism analysts are asking whether Osama bin Laden may be only a figurehead in a terror campaign mounted by Iraq in a continuing war with the United States.

The case is made most forcefully by Laurie Mylroie of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

"How likely is it that Osama bin Laden, or through him any other group, carried out these attacks alone, unassisted by a state?" she asked. "It is extremely unlikely -- next to impossible. These attacks speak of a high degree of sophistication and organization."

Last year, Mylroie published "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America," which argues that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

U.S. prosecutors indicted bin Laden on charges of leading the conspiracy that resulted in the embassy blasts, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Richard Murphy, a top diplomat in former President Reagan's administration, who is now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said he was impressed with Mylroie's work.

"She's certainly put a body of evidence out there which commands study and consideration," he said. "In trying to figure out how such a disciplined operation could be conceived and executed without the knowledge of any government, Saddam's name comes up again."

Saddam celebrated the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon.

"He who does not want to reap evil should not sow evil," the Iraqi news agency quoted him as saying. The news agency said Saddam accused the United States of exporting evil, corruption and crime and now was "reaping the thorns sown by its rulers."

But efforts to link terrorists back to host countries often serve the political interests of other governments. Israeli anti-terrorism specialists have long argued that an alliance exists among Palestinian militants, Saddam and Iran, even though these three have bloodied one another through many years of war and intrigue.

The State Department's most recent report on terrorism includes Iraq on a list of nations considered sponsors of terrorism. But it looks past Iraq to Sudan and Afghanistan in discussing support to bin Laden.

The Iraqi regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President Bush in 1993 in Kuwait," the report says.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, said there is reason to suspect that Iraq provided crucial assistance to bin Laden's al Qaeda organization.

"I don't think you run big operations like this without a lot of sophisticated intelligence, which I think only a state-level intelligence operation could provide, along with the continuity and analytic capabilities it requires," Odom said. "The candidates which one would suspect obviously includes Iraq at the top."

-- Anonymous, September 17, 2001

Answers

I think there is a test.

I think bin Laden is just after us, but Saddam also wants Israel (or at least a whole lot more than OBL does).

So...if nothing happens on this Jewish holiday in Israel it is more likely OBL than Saddam behind Tuesday's attack.

-- Anonymous, September 17, 2001