Saddamites attack in Turkey

Laurie Mylroie:

..."Bombing attacks south of the Turkish-Iraqi border are regularly attributed to one party, Baathist stalwarts, while bombs north of that border are said to be the work of a completely different party, al Qaeda, as if one had nothing to do with the other. Why?

"A major intelligence failure that began on Bill Clinton's watch persists. American officials remain wedded to the conviction that Islamic militants operate independently of terrorist states. The U.S. error was compounded by an Israeli intelligence failure, closely linked to the ill-fated 'peace process.'

..."This division between 'secular' and 'fundamentalist' is not meaningful. Princeton's learned Bernard Lewis has cautioned that this is a Western distinction that does not exist in Islam. Nonetheless, many analysts persist in making it.

"Moreover, such analysts habitually invert the relationship between states and groups, as the latter, particularly al Qaeda, is their focus. Yet states are the primary actors in international affairs. They control territory and have the power to tax and otherwise raise revenues. The nastiest of them have multiple intelligence services and major unconventional-weapons programs — biological, chemical, and nuclear. Indeed, senior administration officials have repeatedly warned that the threat is terrorist states working with and hiding behind terrorist groups to commit acts of unconventional terrorism.

"Most probably, the Istanbul bombings were the work of Iraqi intelligence, in concert with Islamic militants.

..."Al Qaeda on its own — if it still exists in any meaningful form — would not have had the capability to carry out the attacks in Istanbul. Moreover, one indication of a "false flag" operation is that the investigation is too easy. Authorities are immediately led down one track, away from the real culprits. Thus, the passport of one suicide bomber in the first set of attacks, on the synagogues, was found amid the wreckage.

..."One major reason for ousting Saddam was the strong suspicion that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 strikes, as well as the anthrax letters that followed. There was, however, enormous bureaucratic resistance to that notion. The concept is not difficult to comprehend, nor is evidence lacking, but as columnist Andrew Sullivan recently suggested, government bureaucrats simply do not want to acknowledge a serious error."

Prairiepudit would add that the "mainstream" media have the same problem.

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