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

To: Doc Bones who wrote (54091)	10/23/2002 7:49:25 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I honestly don't give a damn whether there is a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Iraq does foster terrorists, regardless of their connection (or lack thereof) to Al Qaeda. We are bent on eradicating terrorism, period, or at least depriving terrorists of any resting place. Going after Al Qaeda and going after Iraq are separate paths to solve separate, but similar, problems.

To: Doc Bones who wrote (54091)	10/23/2002 1:18:43 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

I found this striking: When they did, Mr. Hussein and other Iraqi officials called publicly for a holy war against "imperialist targets" if the U.S.-led coalition invaded. It was at this point that he broke his pattern of regional focus and for the first time prepared a homegrown terrorist assault against the U.S. Several hundred operatives were put through a hurried training course at two camps near Baghdad. The Iraqis made plans to bomb U.S. facilities in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, according to published accounts and former U.S. intelligence officials. The effort was a failure. Although there were numerous shootings, grenade attacks and other small-scale terrorism in the Middle East before and during the Gulf War, there were no hijackings, bombings or other major strikes against Western targets. The CIA and other friendly intelligence services rounded up Iraqi agents in Thailand and the Philippines with ease. The reason, according to current and former intelligence officials, was that the Iraqi teams proved remarkably unskilled, both at keeping their links to Baghdad secret and at carrying out their missions. So Saddam tried to launch terrorist attacks against US interests, he just failed due to ineptness. This probably lulled us into thinking that we could just stay one step ahead of any major plots. That stopped working on 9/11. It's bad planning to assume that your enemy is going to stay incompetent. Think what Saddam could do with his funding, his weapons, his state intelligence apparatus, and by co-opting a few members of AQ's A-team to do some "technology transfer" -- and nothing prevents it save Saddams own assessment of his interests. Just lovely, eh?