In another article published by the Council on Foreign Affairs, the writer explains that Saddam Hussein's regime has provided training camps, operating bases, headquarters and other kinds of support to terrorists groups that were fighting against the regimes in Turkey and in Iran, both countries which border Iraq. Also, during the Gulf War in 1991, it was explained in the Council on Foreign Affairs article, Saddam paid for several terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities, but those failed to be completed.
In the Bill Clinton Administration, there was a time when Saddam Hussein was accused of sponsoring (or planning, or providing support for) a potential act of terrorism. In an article published in the New Leader (Schorr, 1993) the author, then a CBS News reporter, explained that Clinton ordered a missile attack against Hussein's regime. The attack was retaliatory because allegedly Hussein had plotted to assassinate former president George H.W. Bush, while Bush was visiting Kuwait in April 1993. In the article, Schorr writes that Clinton's public position on the missile attack (aimed at Hussein's intelligence headquarters and apparently finding its target) was that it should be a warning to all states that sponsor terrorism.
Daniel Schorr also mentions that President Ronald Reagan attacked Libya five years into his presidency; the attack was in response to Libya's involvement in the bombing of a discotheque in Germany that U.S. military personnel were known to frequent. Again this is an incident of state-sponsored terrorism, and the American retaliation for that terrorism.
The State Department document alluded to in the first paragraph of this paper states that terrorist groups that do not receive state support have a much more challenging time finding the money, weapons, various materials and secure territory they need to carry out their various insidious operations. That is principally why terror groups seek state support. As to the implications for a country that is considered a state sponsor of terrorist activities, that country is blocked from receiving any U.S. aid, and that country may not engage in trade with any U.S. companies.
In his book, Chain of Command, author Seymour H. Hersh explains that Syria has been on the State Department's list of states supporting terrorism since 1979. Why? Syria has been providing money, weapons, and other important support for Hezbollah, a known terrorist group that was founded in Lebanon in 1982 following the take-over of Lebanon by Israel in 1982 (p. 335). Hezbollah took credit for the bombing of the American Marine base barracks in Beirut in 1983, which killed 241 Marines. Syria has not tried to hide its support for Hezbollah, and yet ironically, Syria, according to Hersh's book, has given information to the U.S. (CIA and FBI) regarding the activities of Al Qaeda after the bombings in the U.S. On September 11, 2001.
Hersh also writes (p. 336) that although Syria resents being on the U.S. list of states that support terror, Syria in fact has helped the U.S. avoid an Al Qaeda attack on the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Al Qaeda was planning on flying a glider full of high explosives into a building at the Navy headquarters, but a tip from Syria - which has its own spies and intelligence networks - thwarted that attempted terrorism.
The Council on Foreign Relations is a non-partisan resource for information on foreign affairs; the Council takes the position that Cuba is probably not providing money or materials for terrorists in other countries. The Council on Foreign Relations' position, as stated in their Web site: (http://www.cfr.org/publication/9359/states_sponsors.html) asserts that while Cuba did in fact provide training and weapons to various communist rebel groups in Africa and Latin America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, intelligence experts now say they have virtually no evidence that Cuba is providing any state support to terrorist groups.
In 1998 a comprehensive review of Cuba's involvement or non-involvement in terrorist activities (or support for terrorists anywhere in the world) was conducted by the U.S. intelligence community (CIA, NSA, FBI). The report concluded that Cuba does not pose a threat to U.S. national security, which certainly suggests that Cuba no longer sponsors terrorism. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration feels for apparently political reasons that it must keep Cuba on the list; it is fairly clear that among the conservative constituents who helped Bush get elected...
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