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ozens of unclassified documents from the Harmony database have been released for public inspection this week by the Pentagon, and they are already giving conniptions to the "Saddam had no WMD, Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism" opponents of liberated Iraq. Only about 2 million items yet to go -- this will be a long process, and I'm anxious to see how the "progressive" revisionism plays out in parallel with all this new knowledge. Sure, it's anybody's right to believe that Saddam should still be in power today, let's see how it squares with the truth about the Regime of Fear. I don't say it won't be possible for them to continue making the case, but it sure will be fun to watch the sanctimonious faux pacifist contingent tying themselves in knots.

The principle location for these pdf documents is at the Foreign Military Studies Office, with some other categories of documents (relating to al Qaeda and Taliban among other topics) at the Combating Terrorism Center. [I was looking over the material at both sites yesterday, but today I'm denied access to the CTC ("denied by access control list"). I wonder if it's because I'm coming at it from Thailand?] Some documents have been translated (most have not), so people literate in Arabic language are much needed. Omar and Mohammed at Iraq the Model are putting in some effort, as are other middle eastern bloggers, and a good place to track daily developments is on the special
Iraq Files blog on Pajamas Media. Another new site to bookmark is Ray Robison, a former member of the Iraq Survey Group. A quick browse over those two pages will get you started on what's been found in the first week of these releases.

The man who literally wrote the book on Saddam's terrorist connections, Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, should feel a great sense of accomplishment with these releases. He had acquired a small number of the Harmony documents by going through the arduous red-tape route, and it was like pulling teeth. I've cited his work many times on this page, and it's great to see that his efforts have finally paid off by getting the issue the attention it needed. It would have been much better for this material to have been released two years ago, but better late than never.

Hayes' latest piece is the cover story in the Standard this week, Saddam's Philippines Terror Connection. He details the information gleaned from a few of the Iraqi communications between Baghdad and their Manila embassy, showing the support given (with plausible deniability safeguards) to the Abu Sayaf terror group. As I wrote just last week in noting the pro-US demonstration in Jolo by local Muslims, Abu Sayaf has been tightly woven together with both al Qaeda and Jema'ah Islamiyah. In fact, the group was initially set up by al Qaeda operatives, as I recall it was bin Laden's brother. While Abu Sayaf were kidnapping locals and foreign tourists, and beheading them prior to Sept. 11, Saddam was arming and funding them (along with Qadaffi, by the way).

Stephen Hayes was on Washington Journal this week, you can watch it here (realvideo link). Fascinating to note the callers who are outraged at Mr. Hayes -- they're the only ones that have nothing really to add to the discussion, no data to back up their assertions, nothing in fact but simple minded ad hominem rhetoric. A lot of people seem angry that the facts of the regime are finally getting out, and there is nothing they can do to stop it. So they bluster, Stephen thanks them for their thoughts, and then he gets back to talking about reality after they hang up in anger -- unwilling to even hear it. And they call themselves the "reality based community." I bet Orwell would get a chuckle out of that one ...