"Iraq How-to Manual Directed Arab Military Operatives In Afghanistan"

From the scourge of the left's existence, Fox News:

An Arab regime, possibly Iraq, supplied how-to manuals for Arab operatives working throughout Afghanistan before 9/11, and provided military assistance to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

That's the most likely conclusion drawn from an apparent training manual unearthed in captured Iraqi government computer files translated and analyzed exclusively for Fox News, and made public for the first time.

The document, apparently written before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, could bolster the Bush administration's contention that Saddam Hussein was providing support for Islamic extremists who were plotting against America.
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That revelation is provided exclusively to Fox News by Ray Robison, a former member of the CIA-directed Iraq Survey Group. ISG supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit the hundreds of captured documents and materials of Saddam's regime.

Fox News and Robison last week revealed the contents of a 1999 notebook kept by an Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) operative. That notebook detailed how Saddam's agents aggressively pursued and entered into a diplomatic, intelligence, and security arrangement with the Taliban and Islamist extremists operating in Afghanistan — years before the 9/11 attacks.

While the training manual revealed today by Fox News does not mention the IIS agent's notebook, the manual does suggest an Arab regime, most likely Saddam, may have provided the military help requested by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The manual, declassified and recently released by the Foreign Military Studies Office, advises its Arab readers never to show your "military ID." That strongly suggests that Iraq was sending professional military assistance to Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks.

I'm sure these Arabs were just touring the beautiful Afghan countryside...that's all! Nothing to see, move along...

There's more, including a translation, so feel free to read it at your convenience. However, in the final analysis...:

This document supports a few strong conclusions. It clearly proves that an Arab country was providing professional military assistance to Arab operatives in Afghanistan. While the document does not identify the country of origin of these Arab men, it's a logical omission since it wouldn't make sense to name the country in a memo whose purpose is to instruct how to hide one's nationality.

It is important to note, however, that in 1999, Iraq — along with Syria — was again identified by the U.S. Department of State as a government sponsor of terrorism, the only two Arab nations classified as state sponsors of terrorism at that time.
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This manual provides further evidence that the Iraqi military was active in Afghanistan and working with the Taliban. The Taliban harbored and trained with Al Qaeda. The information in the document matches media reports that U.S. intelligence sources believed the IIS was training Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It also matches information from other IIS documentation that shows requests from Islamic Jihad groups in Afghanistan for Iraqi military assistance.

Time for my "not going out on a limb" prediction: the left will ignore this, as they have all of the other indicators of Saddam's involvement with Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, and will continue to chant the mindless baseless "There was no link between Saddam and terrorism" sound bites.