For the past three years we have listened to what critics of the war in Iraq and those who opposed Saddam’s removal had to say: that the war was based on a bunch of lies; that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and that Saddam’s regime had no connection to Al Qaeda. Well, fine. Now the US administration has decided to publish some of the documents it confiscated from Iraqis and things are starting to change. And given the tenor of what is being made public, opponents of the war are the ones who need to start explaining themselves.

 

The connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda is clear. There is now documented proof various parts of Bin Laden’s network were inside Iraq –for example, in Kurdistan, where they helped train Al Ansar’s militants and where they used specific installations for their own training programs. We know Al Zarqawi had meetings with Baath party leaders in Baghdad itself, as did Abdul Raman Yasin, the mastermind behind the original 1993 Twin Tower bombing attempt. Everyone who vehemently claimed that collaboration between Saddam’s secular regime and fundamentalist Islamists was categorically impossible (including Jorge Dezcallar, former director of Spain’s intelligence operations) should revise their theories based on the more than ten years of close cooperation between Al Qaeda and elements within the Iraqi regime, both in Iraq and outside the country. This cooperation stretched from Sudan to the Philippines, among other places. And this is just a small part of the documentation available on the Internet.     

As far as weapons of mass destruction, the documents published to date leave no room for doubt: many of the top military brass in Iraq truly believed they had them and that they were fully operational. This is not speculation, but their very words. And among other papers and transcriptions from telephone conversations, Saddam’s ambition to get hold of a nuclear warhead no matter what, becomes patently clear. This is not an excuse for intelligence errors, but it puts them into context. Before the invasion, everyone, even the Iraqis, thought Iraq had an arsenal of weapons at its disposal.

 

It is unfortunate that the political state of affairs doesn’t move at the same pace as the work of historians. But the protestors who marched in the streets accusing Bush, Blair and Aznar of lying, should start worrying. As experts analyze the tons of confiscated material, they are learning it was the protestors who were lying, not the ones who kicked Saddam out of power. The reason they wanted to confuse and trick us will have to be explained sooner or later –although we have a pretty good idea already.