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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Red Heeler who wrote (584161)	6/19/2004 8:22:19 PM
From: Andrew N. Cothran	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Saturday, June 19, 2004 12:28 a.m. EDT NY Times Flip-flops on Iraq-al Qaida Ties The New York Times is so determined to discredit evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda that it's now contradicting its own earlier reports that Iraq-based WMD specialist Abu Musab al Zarqawi was ever a key member of al Qaida. In its lead editorial on Saturday, the Times complains that President Bush has cited Zarqawi "as evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda*." Story Continues Below "Mr. Bush used to refer to Mr. Zarqawi as a 'senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner' who was in Baghdad working with the Iraqi government," the paper adds. "But the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime, nor [was he] under the direction of Al Qaeda." It turns out, however, that President Bush isn't the only one who used to say that Zarqawi worked closely with al Qaida. Just last month, the Times wrote this about the notorious terrorist: "He is thought to have extensive ties across the militant Islamic movement and is considered an ally of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda's leader. A letter that the American authorities said had been written by Mr. Zarqawi and that they released in March claims his responsibility for some 25 bombings in Iraq." [NYT - May 14, 2004] Two days before that, the Times cited Zarqawi's activities as an example of how al Qaida had decentralized as the U.S. racheted up the pressure in the war on terror: "Though Mr. Zarqawi reportedly has strong ties to Al Qaeda, American officials say he and Al Qaeda operate separately. He is often cited as an example of how Al Qaeda has transformed itself from a tightly knit organization into a far-flung operation comprising free-lance terrorists, drawing on Mr. bin Laden mostly for inspiration and technique." [NYT - May 12, 2004] But Zarqawi wasn't always "free lance," at least not according to what the Times reported in 2002. Back then the paper cited European intelligence experts who had no doubts about Zarqawi's leadership role in al Qaida: "Magnus Ranstorp, a professor at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, described Mr. Zarqawi as 'one of the top four or five Al Qaeda figures,'" the Times noted without a hint of skepticism. [NYT - April 26, 2002] The paper also quoted Mr. Ranstorp as saying, "Aside from Osama bin Laden, Mr. Zarqawi was one of the most senior Qaeda officers who have been neither captured nor killed." In fact, according to the same Times report, German prosecutors believe that Zarqawi was behind the foiled Millenium bomb plot to blow up LAX airport in December 1999 - considered by experts to be the biggest al Qaida plot against the U.S. before Sept. 11. What about Zarqawi's Iraq connections before the Iraq war - at a time when he was still working under the direction of bin Laden? The Times, along with most media sources, doesn't say much beyond noting that he was fitted with an artificial leg at a Baghdad hospital after fleeing Afghanistan when the Taliban fell. But there's much stronger evidence that Zarqawi was working with Iraq well before the U.S. attacked in March 2003. At least one of the al-Qaida plotters arrested in Jordan in April as part of a foiled WMD plot that Jordanian officials say could have killed 80,000 people, has confessed that he was trained by Zarqawi in Iraq two years before the U.S. attack. In a confession first broadcast on Jordanian television, then rebroadcast by ABC's "Nightline" on April 26, the unnamed WMD conspirator revealed: "In Iraq, I started training in explosives and poisons. I gave my complete obedience to Zarqawi. . . . After the fall of Afghanistan, I met Zarqawi again in Iraq." U.S. forces vanquished the Taliban government in Kabul in December 2001 - fifteen months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Apparently the Times wasn't convinced that a videotaped confession by an al Qaida detainee detailing a pre-war Iraq-Zarqawi-al Qaida connection was very important, since they have yet to cover the story.