One of Ours

“There is at least one officer of Saddam’s Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaeda,” said September 11 commission member and former Navy Secretary John Lehman.

...captured documents listed one Ahmed Hikmat Shakir as a senior officer in the elite paramilitary Saddam Fedayeen. By an amazing coincidence, an Ahmed Hikmat Shakir was present at the January 2000 al-Qa’eda “summit” in Kuala Lumpur at which the September 11 attacks were planned.

It is of course possible that this was a different Ahmed Hikmat Shakir. However, Hayes reveals subsequent events showed this man was very important indeed to Iraq. Four days after September 11, he was arrested in Qatar and found to possess phone numbers of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombers’ safe houses and contacts, as well as information about an al-Qa’eda plot to blow up airliners. But he was released, re-arrested in Jordan and released again (with CIA collusion) - following pressure from Iraq at the highest level.

[...]

“Obviously, if there is any information (that) has to do with the subject of the report, we need it, and we need it pretty fast,” Commission Chairman Thomas Kean said...He said the final report would be modified to take any new intelligence into account.

The radical Lebanese Shi'ite organization Hezbollah has been moving fighters to Iraq in recent months to battle American troops. According to American intelligence, the transfer has been carried out through Syria, following an Iranian initiative. The transit through Syrian territory is permitted by Damascus along its porous border with Iraq.

The Hezbollah fighters moving to Iraq are part of a broader force of pro-Iranian militants that operates in Iraq to destabilize the country and undermine the Americans there.

Analysts believe that the movement of the Hezbollah fighters to Iraq serves both Tehran and Damascus, which favor instability in Iraq for their own reasons.

Iran is eager to see the Hezbollah fighters establish operations in Iraq before a new regime is installed in Baghdad.

[...]

In its interim report, the Congressional bipartisan commission of inquiry into the events of 9/11 states that the cooperation between the Hezbollah and Al-Qaida is extensive.

American officials said recently that Syria has not seriously responded to American demands to seal its border with Iraq against the transit of "foreign fighters." According to U.S. sources, neither a letter to President Bashar Assad from Secretary of State Colin Powell nor the subsequent American decision to impose sanctions on Syria had the desired effect on Damascus...