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

To: thames_sider who wrote (100494)	6/6/2003 6:47:42 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (2) \| 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... He didn't have to be under Saddam's control, any more than OBL had to be under the Taliban's control. Saddam knowingly provided a safe haven to an active international terrorist network. 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? Ansur al-Islam was based in the mountains along the Iranian border, and had forcibly taken several villages tenuously under Kurdish control. Unlike Saddam's police state, the Kurdish north was neither united or totally under control by the various Kurdish factions. It's a matter of record. 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. Because Ansur al-Islam controlled that area. Like it says above. "Ansar al-Islam, t-h-a-t c-o-n-t-r-o-l-s t-h-i-s c-o-r-n-o-r o-f I-r-a-q." 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". He didn't have to believe a tip from a foreign intelligence agency - he already knew Zarqawi was there. Saddam ran a police state. Or do you believe that Zarqawi got medical care - in a country where only Republican Guard and Baath officials got any kind of real medical care - without Saddam giving his implicit support? He knew he was there, and not only didn't do anything to stop them, he allowed Zarqawi to import agents to Baghdad to conduct very high profile operations against US and European interests (killing a US diplomat!) from within Iraq. Since at least June 2002. And Zarqawi was in Iraq before that. Bush didn't give his speach to the UN until September. There was no gun to Saddam's head. He had every reason to act, and mollify us. <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? This falls under "true but irrelevant." The speed with which we dispatched the Ansur al-Islam, after a sustained bombing campaign, has nothing to do with the price of tea in China. We took the whole damn country in three weeks. Why should Saddam have cared? Derek