"A federal judge helping to rebuild Iraq's judicial system says he's come up with an intriguing document linking Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden. "
X, imo, the only logical explanation for why this story isn’t making the news is because it’s a trifle. What you’ve read so far is probably about all there is. For example there is nothing said about when this contact was set up. It could have been the week before, so it’s hard to make inferences. Bit of stretch on the judges part, imo.
Finding an al Queda-Iraq connection is not a problem, already numerous low level operatives have been picked up. The iraq response is a question of responsibility, and how folks define this. It’s a question of proportionality,an issue, and accountability, a value, because it’s these that went out the window, or didn’t, depending on your view, after 911.
If they already have the evidence of the kind of al Queda-Saddam connection that we’re all hoping to see one day, then, if only to patch up some bruised credibility, and bolster their reputation as straight shooters, why not set up a schedule of dates to release the information or parts thereof, doctored to fit the situation of course. Surely at this stage it would make sense for Blair at the least, to do something like this, or is it simply that in the court of world opinion, withholding the evidence should not be a crime. Perhaps we should ask Sadam.
It’s easy to hold up your enemies and say they’re connected, sure they are, they’re your enemies - in the WoT, everything is connected, but if you don’t have the evidence of certain specifics, then what Godly reason is there, to make the particular case.
Before the war, Bush and members of his cabinet said Saddam was harboring top al-Qaida operatives
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The administration's key evidence of a link was an operative named Abu Musab Zarqawi, who got medical care in Baghdad in May 2002 after being wounded in Afghanistan. In his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations, Powell called Zarqawi "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants."
Current and former intelligence officials now say Zarqawi's links to al-Qaida are more tenuous - the CIA now says Zarqawi considers himself independent of al-Qaida, for example. And while Zarqawi spent time in Iraq, it's unclear whether Saddam's regime simply allowed him to be there or actively tried to work with him.
"There was scant evidence there had been any other contacts between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden," Graham said in an interview Friday.
U.S. officials say a handful of suspected al-Qaida members have been captured in Iraq, but most are probably low-level operatives. The biggest catch was a man described as a midlevel terrorist operative who worked for Zarqawi, who was nabbed in April near Baghdad.
Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said last week it's still unclear how much support Zarqawi and his followers got from Saddam.
"That he (Saddam) was promoting al-Qaida is absurd," Cannistraro said. "That there was a tolerance for a Zarqawi network in Iraq seems clear."
High-level captives from both al-Qaida and Saddam's regime also have denied any links between the two, U.S. officials say. They say al-Qaida leaders Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubayda denied their network worked with the former Iraqi government.
Farouk Hijazi, a former Iraqi intelligence operative who U.S. officials allege met with al-Qaida operatives and perhaps bin Laden himself in the 1990s, also has denied any Iraq-al-Qaida ties, officials say.
kansascity.com
True story. My Connection to al–Queda.
Shortly after 911 my office in India received a visit from the son of the Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid. He came looking for volunteers for Jihad in Afghanistan. The one Muslim guy who was in the office at the time, ran away and hid himself somewhere. A few days later we received another visit from the same guy, this time he was looking to use the company as a front for transferring monies internationally, but there was one very important proviso – the money could not ever have been touched, metaphorically speaking, by the hand of a Jew. Oona, our Partner there, looked at him, laughed and said, but the company is owned by Jews. He got up and left, never to be seen or heard from again.
It’s quite possible that evidence of a connection that is intriguing, doesn’t prove a damn thing. |
