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

To: D. Long who wrote (100493)	6/6/2003 6:06:20 AM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

OK, I'll admit I hadn't heard this before. But if it's genuinely this damning, why hasn't it been more in evidence? It does sound to me as though this guy was acting entirely outside Saddam's control... A few key points from your post. the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq. ... Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. Ah, so the Kurds were aiding AQ? I know, we took the camp out during the invasion; but by your logic, because the camp is in 'Kurdish-controlled' areas the Kurds must be responsible, no? But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered al-Qaida safe haven in the region. They do? How do we know? He 'offered them safe haven'? How? Baghdad doesn't control the area, remember. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice, and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. Of course, Saddam's going to believe everything he's told by spies acting on behalf of the US. And he's going to be delighted to extradite a purported enemy of the US, to the US, on the US's say-so... He might have come into Baghdad in May 2002 (although given how poor we were at locating Saddam, you'll pardon me some scepticism of our ability to locate a shadowy terrorist figure); but by this time - given that we were looking like invading in the autumn - I can't honestly see Saddam co-operating with us, can you? Let's face it, Bush had spent four months demonising him and we'd started massing troops, it was clear what was underway, do you honestly think we'd get co-operation when we say "By the way, there's some evil terrorist based in one of the bits of your country we've blocked you out of. We think he's in Baghdad now, along with some trained assassins; how about you arrest him and hand him over to us, because on the basis of our intelligence he's really nasty". Meanwhile, check back on the .mil links posted yesterday. Saddam chucked out the PLF in 1983 - because he wanted US and Western support. In other words, if we don't want people harbouring our enemies, make them our friends... <edit> BTW, when we wanted to take out this terrorist camp, we did. It took us, what, 2 days? A few Special forces and some Kurds. If that was all there was we could have gone in any time; what would Saddam do about it, what would he even have cared about it? The invasion of Iraq was not about stopping terrorism. Especially not about stopping AQ.