I personally read thousands of reports related to Al Qai'da in Iraq leadership who were former IIS or Special Repbulican Guard members.
Does al Qaeda (however spelt) have an official membership? If not, what do you mean by Al Qai'da in Iraq in this context? How can you say that particular people 'were leading AQ'.
If you mean that former IIS or RG personnel were active leading the resistance/terrorist/insurgence movement, well, no surprise and no news. But this does not make them AQ.
The only genuine AQ name I've heard in Iraq is Zarqarwi; and he wasn't active until after Saddam was removed, and I thought he worked mainly with foreign jihadists.
Or are you saying that there were many IIS and RG personnel moonlighting in Afghanistan/Pakistan for the Taliban and its allies? That was (& is) the only AQ base where they really had numbers.
Oh, and these:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/27/walq27.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/27/ixnewstop.html
... Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service
This would be another of the wonderful Telegraph stories. You may not choose to remember, but they splashed documents linking Galloway with Saddam & corrupt oil payments. Documents again 'found' by Telegraph reporters, in bombed-out Iraqi ministries, at the same time. They lost their libel case very, very heavily - the documents were adjudged irrelevant and unsubstantiated.
That's probably the reason the best reference you quote is a 3-year-old newspaper report...
why the Bush administration isn't producing this information in a concise manner for the American people to understand.
Dancing on pinheads aside, it is not up to us who opposed the war to disprove a negative (no links). You're claiming solid AQ links as though it justifies/d the invasion.
Prove the positive if you can.
With all the documents found, the Wh and DoD have released nothing confirming links. As ele says, given how prominent a plank of the Rumsfeld/Cheney case this was prewar, if they had found anything substantive and substantiated it we can fairly assume it would be shouted out. |
