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April
16, 2003, 1:15 p.m.
Another
Terror Tie
The
evidence against Saddam Hussein continues to stack up.
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n yet another
triumph against terrorism, U.S. special forces captured Abu Abbas Monday
night. The head of the Palestine Liberation Front most notoriously masterminded
the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in October
1985. Four gunmen held passengers hostage for two days off the coasts
of Egypt and Israel. They then murdered American citizen Leon Klinghoffer,
a 69-year-old Jewish retiree from Manhattan. Islamic killers shot him
in the head and chest, then rolled him and his wheelchair into the Mediterranean.
The next day, Klinghoffer's body washed up on a Syrian beach.
Abbas, 54, was seized
near where he has lived comfortably on and off for 18 years...in Baghdad,
Iraq. American soldiers found him luxuriating in a tree-lined compound
just outside the Iraqi capitol. According to the State Department's "Patterns
of Global Terrorism-2001" (released May 21, 2002), Abbas appeared
on Iraqi state television in fall 2001 to praise Saddam Hussein's government
for mobilizing Arab public opinion against Israel's policies toward Palestinians.
Abbas' presence in
Baghdad — where he maintained an apartment and is believed to have
lived since 1994 — and his recent collaboration with the Baathist
state proves vividly, yet again, that America was correct to topple Hussein
regime. His dictatorship gave aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists
who killed Americans, precisely as supporters of Operation Iraqi Freedom
have argued and its critics have struggled to overlook.
"Right now,
we know he's off the table as a terrorist," General Vincent Brooks
told reporters in today's press briefing at CENTCOM headquarters in Doha,
Qatar.
Pacifists hide behind
a wall of illogic: Since Saddam Hussein did not authorize the September
11 massacre, it was wrong for President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, and at
least 47 other world leaders to target Iraq within the war on terror.
This is like saying that since Adolf Hitler did not order the attack on
Pearl Harbor, America should have ignored the Axis collaboration of Nazi
Germany and imperial Japan and steered clear of Normandy Beach.
Whether or not Hussein
was as shocked as the rest of us when the late Twin Towers were ablaze,
he certainly played host to other Islamic extremists, all of whom are
allied in their homicidal hatred of Jews, America, and the West. As President
Bush observed last October, "Over the years, Iraq has provided safe
haven to terrorists such as Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried
out more than 90 terrorist attacks in 20 countries that killed or injured
nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans." Nidal also lived for
years in Baghdad. He was
found dead of gunshot wounds in his apartment there last August.
Also, indicted 1993
World Trade Center bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin fled to Iraq shortly after
that blast killed six and injured some 1,000 New Yorkers. Yasin walked
freely on Baghdad's streets for at least a year, although Baathist officials
claim they had him in custody from 1994 until, presumably, last week.
American intelligence
officers are now interrogating Iraqi detainees and sifting through seized
archives. As evidence grows of Saddam Hussein's hospitality towards anti-American
murderers, those who opposed the Coalition's swift and moral victory will
find themselves standing on an ever-shrinking ledge, laboring more mightily
each day to justify their vanquished position.
—
Mr. Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service.
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