Iraq and September 11

Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 22:37:27 -0400 (EDT)
To: gulf2000 list
Subject: Re: Laurie Mylroie: Iraq, the Strategic Blunder, NRO

The media industry around sabre rattling toward Iraq continues to
flourish. But I just spent a week in Turkey talking to ordinary people,
and I want to report that Turks are terrified of an Iraq war. Their
economy has been badly battered by September 11 and its aftermath, which
has devastated tourism and by the extended US recession, which has hurt
Turkish exports. This is on top of an economic crisis that cut the value
of the lira in half against the dollar. Virtually everyone I asked told
me that an Iraq campaign next year had the potential for casting them all
into penury. They also, of course, worry that if the Kurds are stirred up
in Iraq, it will eventually spill over into eastern Turkey. Since the
Wolfowitz doctrine of eternal war does require the U.K. and Turkey as
permanent allies, pursuing a policy that has the potential to hurt Turkey
so badly is possibly self-contradictory.


As for the Mylroie piece in National Review Online, it is frankly full of
illogic, innuendo and drum-beating and completely lacking in any evidence
for sweeping assertions. We professors can't help grading papers. This
one flunks.


The piece begins with September 11 and then says that al-Qaida could not
have pulled it off on its own. This is simply not true. The September 11
operation was not in fact terribly complex. It simply required 4 nearly
simultaneous airplane hijackings. It required that some of the hijackers
have attended flight school and know how to operate at a very basic level
the largely computerized flight equipment. It required that they be able
to follow the Hudson river valley and be able to bank. It required that
they hijack planes headed for the West Coast from the East, to ensure they
were loaded with fuel, to act as a bomb. The whole operation probably
cost less than $500,000. You did not need a government to plan this
operation or execute it, which is why it is so frightening. It is a
perfect example of asymmetry. The operation exploited a few basic holes
in U.S. air security, including an assumption that the hijackers would not
blow themselves up along with their planes.


Ms. Mylroie goes on to say that documentation on September 11 in
Afghanistan is slim. Duh. A top secret operation should not have a big
paper trail. If possible everything should be kept oral. *However*, there
are some very significant pieces of evidence locating the planning for the
operation in Afghanistan. The money trail goes back to the UAE and thence
to Pakistan. (Not to Baghdad). Atta and others went to Afghanistan for
training. Al-Qaida informants report seeing some of the hijackers in
al-Qaida camps. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar met with the al-Qaida
station chief in Malaysia before going on to San Diego. Many of the
hijackers were Saudi, which is what one would expect if they were linked
to Bin Ladin. No Iraqis were involved. And, Bin Ladin has been caught on
tape talking about the planning of the operation! Although Ahmed Ressam
(now in federal penitentiary), Djemal Baghal of Algeria (now in prison in
France) and Ra'id Hijazi (now in prison in Jordan) have given extensive
information on al-Qaida activities that has been proven accurate, *none*
has ever so much as mentioned any Iraqi role. Abu Zubayda, Bin Ladin's
Palestinian right hand man now in custody, seems also to be voluble, and
if he were fingering Iraq I think we may be assured we would have heard
about it.


There is no credible evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11.
Nor is there any evidence that I can accept as a professional historian
linking Iraq to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Indeed, the
evidence that al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah planned and executed 1993 is
overwhelming, and the amateurish way it was carried out is evidence in
itself that it was not a sophisticated state operation. Allegations,
assertions, suspicions, and overly complex conspiracy theories abound in
history. Professional historians are trained to weight the evidence and
sort it as to likelihood. Historians of the Middle East have perhaps been
insufficiently responsible in intervening in contemporary history, where
their professional skills are increasingly important. In fact, I would
argue that September 11 would only have been launched by an asymmetric
organization like al-Qaida, not by a state. If a state launched it, it
would be an obvious casus belli and the state officers could expect to
meet the world's most powerful nation in all-out war. Saddam Hussein is a
brutal, crafty dictator, but he is not that stupid and rather likes being
in power.


Atta may or may not have met with the Iraqi intelligence chief, al-Ani, in
Prague. There are conflicting reports and the most recent public
assessments by Western intelligence agencies deny the meeting. If it did
occur, it almost certainly centered on the possibility of blowing up the
Radio Free Europe offices--not on September 11. Atta by this time had
shaved his beard and adopted a secular lifestyle, and if al-Ani did meet
him, al-Ani would have had no way to know he was al-Qaida. That al-Qaida
was capable of practicing false flag tradecraft toward the Baath Party is
far more plausible than than the Baath Party would get into bed with
radical fundamentalists who want to overthrow secular Arab governments and
resurrect the caliphate.


I continue to be skeptical that Saudi Arabia will lend its air space and
military facilities to a US war on Iraq. And, for technical reasons, I
believe that it would be difficult for the US to prosecute the war without
access to Saudi airspace. In the meantime, unsubstantiated allegations
and blatant illogicalities are not going to be of any help to us as a
nation in determining our security future. In fact, they could lead us in
counter-productive directions. Iraq has never been able to strike at the
US in any significant manner. Al-Qaida has. Al-Qaida is not dead, and,
indeed, may as we speak be attempting to foment nuclear war in South Asia
by terrorist attacks on Indian positions in Kashmir. The Bush
Administration would be well advised to keep its eye on that ball.


Sincerely,


Juan Cole
U of Michigan


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bin Laden's Plan

When I said that "He (OBL) knew what the likely US response would be, and
had thought several steps ahead, as in chess" I was referring to September
and October, when the al-Qaida propaganda machine clearly was way ahead of
the United States. I personally also believe that al-Qaida assassinated
Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, on September 9
quite deliberately because Bin Ladin knew that the US would likely use the
Northern Alliance against him and his Taliban colleagues. He probably
figured that without its most experienced, popular and charismatic leader,
the alliance might fall apart and would be harder to mobilize by the U.S.


I did not mean to imply that Bin Ladin expected the US rather easily to
dislodge the Taliban, as they did Nov.-Dec. Even there, however, it seems
obvious that Bin Ladin had carefully planned what he might do if the US
*was* able to reach into Afghanistan, and that he has successfully eluded
them, along with most of his major lieutenants. I mean, it is really
quite extraordinary that he has eluded capture, and it suggests careful
forethought on his part. I do not believe he is dead. I think he has a
very nicely furnished cave somewhere not far from Khost, maybe on the
Pakistani side of the border. And I do not think we have heard the last
of him. It would be foolish of him to come out in the open after Tora
Bora and frontally challenge the US at this point. Bin Ladin does not
work though frontal challenges, anyway. He strikes sideways.


Sincerely,


Juan Cole
U of Michigan
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bin Laden's Intentions

In his taped interview with Sheikh al-Harbi (or whoever it was), which was probably secretly taped without Usama's knowledge by one of al-Harbi's associates, Bin Ladin says that he was the most optimistic of the al-Qaida high command about the impact of the planes. However, he only thought that the floors above the impact would collapse. There is evidence that the hijackers had engaged in some sophisticated engineering calculations about the amount of fuel on the planes and their likely kinetic impact. The hijackers deliberately took planes heading from the East Coast to California so as to maximize the amount of fuel, which acts as a bomb.

Sheikh Omar `Abdel Rahman, the blind leader of al-Gamaa al-Islamiyah who was implicated in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Towers has admitted in interviews that the truck bomb used then was a poor substitute. What they had wanted to do was put explosives on an airplane, but they could not figure out a way to get the explosives on without tipping security. With an engineer at the head of al-Qaida and with several engineers recruited for the job in Europe, they figured out that the jet fuel itself would act as an explosive.

Ramzi Yousef, who was among the bombers at the World Trade Center in 1993, fled to the Philippines thereafter. He continued to plot there, and worked on a plan to fly an hijacked jet liner into the CIA headquarters. His kitchen accidentally caught on fire in Manila and he fled downstairs. The Philippine police found the plans in his personal effects in the apartment and handed them over to the CIA, which appears to have misplaced them. The Filipino intelligence, afraid it would be blamed for the fiasco, then leaked them to the press.

Ramzi Yousef then went to meet up with his al-Qaida handlers in Pakistan, but was captured by the Pakistani ISI in 1996 and handed over to the Americans.

There is not any doubt that Bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri, Abu Zubaydah and others sat down in a room and planned out the attack on the WTC, down to the details, and speculated as to how much damage it would do. They may have been inspired by Ramzi Yousef's plans. Having been disappointed in 1993, most of them did not expect any sort of collapse. Only Bin Ladin, a trained engineer, believed some floors would collapse, at least above the impact.

The response at al-Jazeera through videotapes by Bin Ladin to the US was thoroughly orchestrated beforehand. He knew what the likely US response would be, and had thought several steps ahead, as in chess. I don't know how to prove this to anyone if they can't see what I think is fairly obvious in the pattern of quick and pertinent response, which dominated the news cycles rather as the Clinton team did via email in the 1992 presidential campaign.

I am a little surprised that the question of Bin Ladin's intentionality, and that of his associates, is any longer being broached.

Sincerely,


Juan Cole
U of Michigan

For "cont'd" postings, click here.