QandO: Saddam: "But we too can harm you."

June 18, 2004

Saddam: "But we too can harm you."
Posted by Jon Henke

Captain Ed finds a fairly shocking story. I simply don't know what to make of this....

Russia warned the United States on several occasions that Iraq's Saddam Hussein planned "terrorist attacks" on its soil, President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

"After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received such information and passed it on to their American colleagues," he told reporters.

The Kremlin leader, who was speaking in the Kazakh capital, said Russian intelligence services had many times received information that Saddam's special forces were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States "and beyond its borders on American military and civilian targets."

The first questions that occur to me:
1: How much credibility did Russia assign to that information?
2: How much credibility does the US assign to that information?
3: Why are we just hearing this now?
4: Are we just hearing about this now because the information was dubious?
5: Through what kind of sources did Russia get this information? If they came from Russia's own intelligence work, they would have more credibility than if they came from Iraqi (dis)informants (read: Chalabi's INC)

Dick Cheney was on NBC this morning, continuing to make the case for "links" between Iraq and Al Qaeda, so this is apparently an avenue down which the administration is comfortable travelling....but one has to ask why they couldn't make it long before now?

Finally, I'd remind you of Saddam Hussein, circa 1990: "We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you."

Read Captain Ed for more commentary.

TrackBack

Comments