Goodbye And Good Luck, Iraq

vol.10.5.26

“We found no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”- 9/11 Commission Report

This week saw the final departure of our armed forces from Iraq which was unlike the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, in that none were killed. We should pause to remember the tragic yet important events in American history which took place there in Iraq over the past three decades.

Our departure signals to the world once again we are not the imperialists of old. Not since 1848, at the conclusion of the Mexican War, have we taken land from a vanquished enemy. We fight, win, most often help to rebuild, and leave. In the case of Iraq, we fought wars fully justified three times on its soil.

Our first invasion of Iraq was ordered by George Bush the Elder in 1991, dubbed Desert Storm, to eject Sadam Hussein from Kuwait. The second was ordered by his son, George Bush the Younger, dubbed Iraqi Freedom, which began in March of 2003, lasted until 2011, and cost 4,418 American lives. President Trump ordered our forces to return in 2014 to support allied forces and to destroy a virulent Islamist sect called ISIS which had conquered large portions of Iraq and Syria. The Muslimist killers were instantly killed by our vastly superior special forces but at a cost in lives of 123 Americans.

The elimination of ISIS was accomplished in a few months. Yet the US remained in the war-torn country for the past fourteen years until a leader emerged, Ali Falih al-Zaidi, who seems sane enough not to side with Islamic terrorists running their neighbor Iran and with their allied with the tyrants running the axis of evil in North Korea, Russia, and Iran.

In his Epoch Times column, Chris Summers writes, “…(American) troops invaded to oust Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, who was suspected of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, evidence of which was never found.”

Here the columnist is referencing the mantra repeated endlessly by the mainstream media and the Democrat Party to discredit the Second Iraq war and vilify its Commander in Chief. Even President Trump has referred to the Iraq war as a “dumb war.” As a supporter, his statement makes me cringe. No president should ever disparage a recent American war. What of the families of those 4,500 brave soldiers who gave their lives?

Most importantly, the mantra is false. During the aftermath of the second Iraq war which coincided with Bush’s reelection campaign against John Kerry, at every gathering I attended, Democrat acquaintances would inevitably attempt to goad me into conceding that Bush and his war were illegitimate or worse by pronouncing the mantra, “Of course, everyone knows there were no WMD’s.”

To which I would answer, “Do you mean ordinance or programs?”

In every instance, this caused the liberal goader to look at me dumbfounded, as if I had asked him or her a question in Arabic. I would answer my own question.

“Ordinance it the finished product, the bomb or drum or cannister of biologic or chemical weapon. Programs are the research labs and production facilities for making the weapons”, I would say. “When Bagdad fell, we found ample evidence that Hussein was working secretly on all three species of WMD, nuclear, biologic, and nuclear.”

Let history record that Hussein had been making war on the United States since 1991 when President George Bush (the Elder), ejected him from Kuwait. In a piece I wrote in the Spring of 1994, I reported that the first World Trade Center attack was an Iraq-sponsored operation:

Abdul Rahman Yasin, the son of an Iraqi father living in Baghdad, entered the U.S. on an Iraqi passport in June of 1992. At 12:18 p.m. a van filled with explosives and cyanide exploded in the parking lot of the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring over 1,000. (If one tower had collapsed on the other, the loss of life would have dwarfed 9/11.) He was captured in New York and later admitted to mixing the chemicals for the bomb. At first, because he seemed so cooperative in providing details of the plot, and disclaimed any significant role in the bombing, the FBI released him. On March 5, 1993, Yasin fled to Baghdad. Documents captured in the Iraq war, prove he was put on an Iraqi intelligence service payroll. Yasin's apartment in New York contained phone records which logged hundreds of calls to Baghdad.

Laurie Mylroie's seminal book, Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein s War Against America, published in 2001, just before 9/11, exhaustively links Hussein to the first WTC attack. She points out that Arabs are notorious for celebrating anniversaries and that the attack occurred on the second anniversary of the Gulf War's end.

Hussein had been continuously, in his state-run media, threatening dramatic revenge. Jim Fox, head of the FBI's New York office at the time of the bombing, and James Woolsey, the CIA Director under Clinton, from 93 to 95, both concluded that Iraq was at least involved. She also adds that the Clinton Administration made no real effort to secure Yasin's extradition from Iraq, one of several mysterious enigmas surrounding that administration’s seeming refusal to uncover anything that pointed to an Iraqi role in the attack.

As we have just commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11, history we should remember Stephen Hayes book, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, published in 2004, where he proves conclusively that Hussein and Bin Laden were coconspirator in the attacks.

(Also in 2004, both the chairman and vice chairman of the tragically politicized 9/11 commission, realizing their work made it more difficult for any President to wage war on the terrorists, immediately made statements distancing themselves from their own report, explaining that they only focused on the 9/11 attack and not on the overall connection between bin Laden and Hussein.

That year I reported on the iron-clad connections between the 9/11 planners and Hussein. I wrote:

In January of 2000 in Kuala Lampur, Malasia, the Iraqi special forces officer, Ahmed, Hikmat Shakir, met the arriving flights and escorted the terrorist heavyweights who assembled there to finalize the Cole bombing and 9/11 operations. Attendees photographed there with Shakir were Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hamzi, the hijackers of Flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon. Shakir received his job as an airport greeter through the Iraqi embassy. When he met the last appointed attendee, he ushered the terrorist to a waiting limo and then jumped in, never to return to his post. Six days after 9/11 he was captured in Qatar with contact information for many al Qaeda senior members including Mahmdouh Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al Iraqi) who in the mid-nineties was Hussein's main intermediary to al Qaeda. Records uncovered since Baghdad’ s fall reveal Shakir was an officer in Hussein's elite Special Forces all along…

In several columns written in 2004 and 2005, I cite scores of detainees and sources who corroborate the mistakeable intelligence linking bin Laden and Hussein and connect the Iraqi dictator to 9/11, making him a coconspirator.

In reflecting upon our three separate invasions of Iraq, America should solemnly remember the warning that George Bush issued on September 20, 2001, one week after 9/11: “From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

Despite the damage done by the rhetoric from the left, we leave Iraq a neutral sovereign country, no longer a state sponsor of terror. We can only hope history will record the first, second and third Iraq wars were just wars, our occupations of the country completely justified, and the ultimate sacrifices made by our brave soldiers were noble and honorable.