Al Qaeda in Iraq? How Could This Be?
"A senior Al Qaeda operative who engineered a brazen escape from a high security American prison in Afghanistan last year was killed in a predawn raid by British soldiers in a quiet, wealthy neighborhood in southern Iraq on Monday," the New York Times reports:
Two companies of about 250 soldiers wearing night goggles and carrying night-vision rifles stormed a house in the neighborhood of al-Tuninnah in Basra, intending to capture the operative. The spokesman for the British military in Iraq, Maj. Charles Burbridge, I [sic] identified the operative as Omar al-Faruq. But they were fired upon as they entered and shot back, killing Mr. Faruq.
Major Burbridge said Mr. Faruq was "a terrorist of considerable significance" who had been hiding in Basra, but he declined to say whether this was the same man who escaped from the American military detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, last July. Mr. Faruq's identity was confirmed by an American official in Washington and by an official in Basra, who was not authorized to speak on the subject.
But we thought al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq! All right, all right, we know the argument is that if Saddam Hussein hadn't been toppled, Faruq wouldn't have been in Iraq. That is, he wouldn't have been in Iraq where allied troops could kill him. This is supposed to be an argument against our presence there?
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