Tuesday, April 19, 2005

OKC, Ten Years Later, and the Iraq Connection

First, on the ten year anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, condolences and prayers for the families of the victims are in order. That should be the central focus of any anniversary activities, and I’m sure it will be. It is incomprehensible to me the grief that they must have experienced on that horrible day.

Second, the conspiracy theory angle involving Islamic terrorism in the bombing is unavoidable, given the post 9/11 lens with which we will observe the anniversary. Some OKC families have been pursuing these terror connections for years, without support from the Federal Government.

Fox News is buzzing today about “new evidence” that Iraq may have been connected to the bombing, and that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols did not act alone. Here’s a newsflash for Fox News – this is not new. Granted Rita Cosby is getting her information from a source that hasn’t talked before – Terry Nichols. But the information itself is not new. The fact that the news media may pay attention to it this time, post 9/11, is new.

I’ve followed the details of OKC in the Islamic terrorism context almost since it happened. Without rehashing all of the details, which I’ve covered in previous posts such as “Let the Witnesses Speak”, here’s what I believe:

1. That the bombing was sponsored by Iraq, and Sadaam Hussein, as part of a revenge campaign for the Gulf War. They couldn’t project force here to invade us, but they could sponsor terrorism.

2. That the bomb was an Iranian design, with Iraqis as the foot soldiers to carry it out in support of McVeigh and Nichols who were willing accomplices for their own purposes. Jayna Davis, investigative reporter from OKC, covers this well in her book “The Third Terrorist”, which I have on my bookshelf of course.

3. You can confirm the Iranian design for yourself by just comparing:

a: photo of the bombed Murrah building in OKC to
b: photo of the bombed Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia a few years later. The 9/11 commission report attributes that bomb design to Hezbollah in Iran.

4. The Iraqi connection, which Rita Cosby verifies in her interview with Terry Nichols, goes through Ramzi Yousef – an Iraqi and Al Qaida’s bomb maker.

5. Terry Nichols was in contact with Yousef in the Philipines, including phone calls and visits. Yousef taught him to make the bomb. This is well documented in “The Third Terrorist”.

6. Yousef’s other plans, to put bombs on American airliners leaving the Philipines, was converted by his uncle, Khalid Sheik Muhammed, into a plan presented to Osama bin Laden that became the 9/11 plan. This is well documented in the 9/11 Commission Report.

7. They’re connected. 9/11 and OKC are at least connected through Ramzi Yousef. And the involvement of both Iranians and Iraqis in OKC indicates to me an organized terrorist plot.

8. The bottom line: America was under Islamic terrorist attack, as revenge for the Gulf War, well before 9/11.

9. The Federal Government, chiefly in the Clinton administration, had this information and deliberately did not act on it. Why?

a. They were not prepared to go to war over OKC.
b. They had a separate working agenda, which was to focus Justice Department resources on internal “right-wing terrorists”. Hence Waco. Hence Ruby Ridge. Hence Federal Marshalls posted at abortion clinics. Etc. Timothy McVeigh played into that agenda and an Iraqi plot did not. So, all of the Yousef information fell on deaf ears in Washington.

Thank you Bill Clinton and Janet Reno.

Wake up people. They are connected. And we cannot continue to avoid that knowledge as we continue to fight the War on Terror.

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