Of Course, Saddam Had No Link to Terrorists...

Such is the folklore that some people want to believe.

Well, we see more evidence all the time that the late Iraqi dictator had ties to terror groups, and this item from the Times of London today demonstrates his maniac so Uday had some sinister plans in mind for Ahmed Chalabi.

Saddam Hussein's son Uday hatched a plot to assassinate the leader of the Iraqi opposition in London in April 2000, according to a new Pentagon study based on documents seized during the Iraq war.

The abortive conspiracy called for an elite recruit in the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary group to kill Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, who was based in London.

The plot is outlined in Iraqi memos that detail Saddam’s support for a wide network of Middle Eastern terror groups, including Islamists linked to Al-Qaeda. They include a 1993 cooperation deal with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became second-in-command of Al-Qaeda when the two groups merged in 2001.

OK, so Saddam Hussein had a cooperation deal with Islamic Jihad when it was headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri? But we're told there was no link between Saddam and al Qaeda?

There is, however, no evidence of the firm link to Osama Bin Laden that the Bush administration had claimed as one of the justifications for attacking Iraq: “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ [ie, direct connection] between Saddam’s Iraq and Al-Qaeda.”

I guess we're supposed to wait until there are pictures of Saddam and Osama bin Laden together before we're allowed to make a connection.

The plot to attack Chalabi in April 2000 is the only example of a specific attack planned in London. It called for a Fedayeen operative to make his way across Europe “for the purpose of executing a sanctimonious [sic] national duty, which is eliminating hostile agent Ahmed Chalabi”.

The Fedayeen was later to prove one of the few Iraqi forces that offered tough resistance to the 2003 invasion, but on this occasion its operation failed because the agent was unable to obtain a visa to enter Britain.

The documents show that officials at the Iraqi embassy in London had a stock of weapons that Saddam had ordered them to destroy in July 2002. The embassy asked Baghdad for advice “regarding how to destroy weapons in London, which include seven Kalashnikov guns, 19 other guns with ammunition, and silencers”.

Saddam had extensive cooperation with Middle Eastern terrorist groups. One memo refers to an agreement with Egyptian Islamic Jihad during the 1991 Gulf war for attacks against Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, which was taking part in the operation to free Kuwait. The memo, dated March 1993, says that whereas Iraq had promised to finance and train Egyptian Islamic Jihad for the attacks, it was now prepared only to provide the group with finance.

As for Uday, well, we know how he wound up.