Did Saddam declare war on the US in 1993?

We've all heard the anti-war pundits tell us that there was no evidence that Saddam was supporting Al Qai'da, or the Jihadist movement, in general. They assert that Saddam was a secular ruler, and thus, the sword enemy of militant Islam. But if this is the case, then why was it that we discovered hundreds of suicide vests at Salman Pak, the camp that US intelligence asserted was a training ground for various terrorist groups?:

http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDJkNDdkMjhjZjI1MWNjYTgyMDc0MmRjMmYzYjQyZGQ=

Exactly which secular Arab terrorist groups commit ritual suicide bombings? Please name a few examples for me (and don't say the LTTE in Sri Lanka.. they aren't muslim).

Were they to be used against the Israelis? Quite possibly. But then again, I have to ask what is the ideological nature of those suicide bombers who have blown themselves up in Israel? I don't personally recall many bombers blowing themselves up in the name of Ba'thism.

And here's one of my favorite little tidbits of information which has been generally ignored by the MSM. It consists of a number of documents recovered by coalition forces after Saddam's overthrow. They date from 1993, prior to the actual creation of Al Qai'da (which was a merger between Bin Ladin's group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led by Ayman Al-Zawahiri) in 1995.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=%5CNation%5Carchive%5C200410%5CNAT20041011a.html

Each of the documents is a copy of the original, with the english translation provided in the small .pdf button above it.

Here's a link to Page 1, a memo from Saddam's desk, dated January 13th, 1993, directing that actions be taken against Americans, especially those operating in Somalia (remember "Blackhawk Down"?). The order precedes the Battle of Mogadishu that led to the deaths of 19 US Army Rangers in Oct, 1993.

You can ask yourself if Saddam's Intelligence operatives played a role in this, or not:

http://www.cnsnews.com/specialreports/2004/exclusive1.asp

English translation for Saddam's order:

http://www.cnsnews.com/PDF/2004/enPage1.pdf

(note: bear in mind that many of the translators we hired for document exploitation (DOCEX) were not the best english speakers, thus the poor grammar and spelling. But in other cases the translations are verbatim.. the Ba'thist leadership was notoriously illiterate).

Now maybe the old Scrutinizer may be a "hawk", but it sure sounds like Saddam was declaring war upon the US by issuing the order to "hunt Americans". And if this isn't tantamount to a declaration of war against the US, then please tell me how you would define it? At the very least, was a direct violation of the terms of the 1991 cease-fire (UNSC 687) ending Operation: Desert Storm. In that cease fire agreement, Saddam agreed to CEASE all cooperation with terrorist groups.

So, the next time someone tells you that Saddam was not a clear and present danger to Americans, print out these documents and show them to them. Here was a guy who was authorizing his intelligence service to interact with the likes of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, one of the primary groups that later formed Al Qai'da and attempted to kill 50,000+ Americans on 9/11 (the number of people who normally worked in the WTC on a daily basis). And although there is little publicly available information as to the extent of the ties that developed after Saddam's 1993 order, it's pretty clear he had no problem coordinating his agenda with Muslim extremists when it suited his interests.

And while you're at it, ask yourself (or your congressional representative) why this administration has been negligent in its obligation to inform the American people as to the nature of the threat that dragged our country into overthrowing Saddam. There had been an effort to publicly release all of the captured Iraqi documents in order to enlist the assistance of academics and native speakers to assist the DOCEX operation. However, that all came to a halt last year when some VERY SENSITIVE untranslated documents related to nuclear triggers found their way into the public realm. Documents that, under the terms of the cease-fire, Saddam's regime should have turned over to UNSCOM back in 1991.

Hmmm....

Btw, there are literally MILLIONS of these types of documents we managed to recover in Iraq. The Iraqi's, like most totalitarian states (remember the Stasi files from E. Germany?), were pretty good record keepers. It made sure that everyone in his corrupt regime was accountable to Saddam and had no excuse for not following his orders. Of course, not all related to the operations of Iraqi intelligence, but suffice it say that we've still only scratched the surface in translating a fraction of them. Simply put, when the Iraq Survey Group, funded by executive order, closed down in April, 2005, no other agency wanted to allocate more than a token budget to keep the Document Exploitation efforts open. Had it not been for the thousands of boxes of Iraqi documents sitting in warehouses waiting for translation, I'm sure the entire operation would have been defunded.

As far as I know, there is only a token "DOCEX" operation still in place, and it could prove to be 5-10 years before we ever know the full truth regarding what else Saddam and his cronies were up to.

The Scrutinizer