Thursday, May 17, 2007

Luckily There Was No Connection...

This new al Qaeda document, when combined with the CNS documents, provides a sequential timeframe for the events and the human linkages to carry out the order from Saddam to his intelligence service to Ayman al Zawahiri to Mohammed Atef and then to his terror trainers.

The revelation about Mohammed Atef comes just days after former CIA Director George Tenet caused a political and media stir with the release of his new book At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. Tenet devotes a portion of the book to discussing al Qaeda-Saddam ties. In it he writes about the case of Ibn Sheikh al Libi, "a senior military trainer for al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan." Al Libi told his interrogators that

"a militant known as Abu Abudullah had told him that...al-Qa'ida leader Mohammed Atef had sent Abu Abdullah to Iraq to seek training in poisons and mustard gas."