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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (50361)	10/8/2002 10:34:15 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

EDITORIAL: Saddam's links to terror Of the arguments made against the Bush administration's plans to take preemptive military action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, none has gained greater currency than the belief that such an attack would distract from the war on terror. But unless you take the view that the murder of Israeli civilians somehow does not qualify as terrorism, this a strange argument. Consider the evidence. Last November, the Shin Beit arrested 15 Palestinians who operated a terrorist cell affiliated with the Arab Liberation Front, a small pro-Iraqi group. Some members of the cell had been trained for their operations in Iraq. The cell was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Yuri Gushstein from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev and for planting a bomb at the Checkpost junction, near Haifa, which lightly wounded five in the summer of 2001. Its members were arrested while planning to carry out attacks against jetliners at Ben-Gurion Airport. The ALF has also been a primary vehicle through which Saddam Hussein pays blood money to the families of Palestinian terrorists. The Shin Beit Tuesday announced its investigation of recently arrested Rafad Salim, ALF leader in the West Bank, who told them Saddam has paid more than $15 million to families of suicide bombers and terrorists wounded while attacking Israeli targets. Saddam himself determined the amounts to be paid: $10,000 to families of suicide bombers, $1,000 to seriously wounded terrorists, and $500 to lightly wounded terrorists. Security officials fear that in the coming US campaign against Iraq, Saddam will deploy Iraqi pilots on kamikaze attacks against Israel. In recent press reports, Western security sources have claimed that the Iraqi air force has managed to prepare a number of its Soviet-made Tupolev-16 and Sukhoi-25 aircraft for suicide missions. These aircraft would be equipped with a so-called dirty bomb a radiological weapon as a possible payload. Then there is the matter of Saddam's overt terrorist intentions against the US and other Western countries. Since the September 11 attacks, quantities of information have surfaced about the Iraqi training camp at Salman Pak outside Baghdad, where terrorists were trained in hijacking civilian aircraft with knives. Information has also come out regarding close cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaida in developing chemical agents suitable for terror attacks. Saddam himself makes no effort to hide the fact that he views terrorism as a legitimate form of warfare. On September 5, the Iraqi weekly Al-Iqtisadi [The Economist], which is owned by Saddam's eldest son Uday, called for the carrying out of suicide operations against US targets. According to MEMRI's translation, the call went out for Arabs to consider "everything American as a military target, including embassies, installations, and American companies, and to create suicide/martyr squads to attack American military and naval bases inside and outside the region, and mine the waterways to prevent the movement of warships." These facts are unimpeachable. And they leave aside persuasive evidence implicating Saddam in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the assassination attempt against former president George Bush, the April 2001 meeting between 9/11 ringleader Muhammad Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, or the daily acts of terror perpetrated by Saddam against his own people. Yet strangely, the facts go ignored. Sensing political opportunity, former US vice president Al Gore suggested last month that war with Iraq "has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism." Others, such as former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and the editorial board of The New York Times, make a similar case. These people should know better, and it is fortunate they are not in a position to dictate policy. We note with approval President Bush's speech on Monday, in which he stressed that "terror cells and outlaw regimes building weapons of mass destruction are different faces of the same evil. Our security requires that we confront both." Exactly. Little wonder that Israelis, who stand to suffer most in the event of a US strike on Iraq, are in this matter the president's firmest supporters. jpost.com

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (50361)	10/8/2002 10:38:44 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

See, you want to blow Iraq off the map Not Iraq. Just Saddam and his cousins. I would prefer that some Iraqi colonel do the honors. The best chance for that outcome is to show up with overwhelming force so they all know that Saddam is toast. In the real world, diplomacy works ever so much better when it is backed up with an instant and credible threat of force.