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Neverdem,

I don't know if you had an opportunity to see Meet The Press on Sunday when Tim Russert asked Richard Clarke what he thought were the goals of Al Qaeda. Clarke immediately went into briefing mode and basically said the following:

1. Al Qaeda is a world wide network of terrorist cells.

2. Al Qaeda wants to kill as many Americans as they can.

3. Al Qaeda is looking to establish radical Islamic States.

My wish is that Tim Russert would have asked Richard Clarke the following question:

How can you state that Iraq is a diversion when:

A. Appeasement and concern about creating more hatred against the U.S. was there before any reaction on our part and the argument that we should waver from our mission is just a “straw man” ----- we are at war. Al Qaeda is relentless and they are not going away.

B. They have no desire to negotiate. Al Qaeda declared war on us and have delivered not one, but many provocations against us and will continue to do so.

C. In this war against Al Qaeda we need multiple bases of operations and Iraq happens to be strategically positioned right in the middle of the Al Qaeda breeding / recruitment grounds.

D. We initially went into Afghanistan and didn't divert to Iraq, but merely opened multiple fronts. We don't have the luxury of time to fight this war in a serial fashion.

E. Have you noticed that Colonel Muammar Qaddafi of Libya just folded his tent without our ever firing a shot? The "diversion of Iraq" spoke volumes to him and isn't it interesting that North Korea all of a sudden decided to start discussions about their nuclear weapons, when before our involvement in Iraq they were saber rattling every other day.

F. Al Qaeda is not just the person Usama Bin Laden or a single location like Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is pervasive.

Now Mr. Clarke, based on the above, would you still consider Iraq a diversion?

March 15, 2002 edition

Taliban-style group grows in Iraq

In the Kurdish north, a new Islamist group with ties to Al Qaeda has killed women without burqas, seized villages.

By Catherine Taylor | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

HALABJA, NORTHERN IRAQ – A radical Islamist group – with possible links to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein – is growing and threatening the stability of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

The group – Ansar al-Islam – emerged just days before the Sept. 11 attacks on the US. It delivered a fatwa, or manifesto, to the citizens in mountain villages against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society there, according to Kurdish party

Since, Ansar al-Islam has nearly doubled in size to 700, including Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians, and Afghans – a composition similar to the multinational Al Qaeda network. Villagers here claim it has ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the burqa. It has seized a Taliban-style enclave of 4,000 civilians and several villages near the Iran border.

With the US dedicated to rooting out Al Qaeda's influence wherever it surfaces in the world, a group of Islamic extremists in northern Iraq with even loose ties to Al Qaeda could complicate further any Iraq intervention. Already the US is in a delicate dance with allies over how to handle Iraq, with many warning that the US must consider the implications of possible instability that a move to topple Hussein could cause.

The emergence of the group comes as the US ramps up pressure on the Hussein regime in Iraq over weapons development. In a White House press conference on Wednesday, President Bush said Hussein "is a problem, and we're going to deal with him."

The State Department did not have extensive information on Ansar al-Islam, but one official there said he was aware of its existence and connection to Al Qaeda.

Ansar al-Islam's leaders

Kurdish military sources say that Ansar al-Islam's Mr. Kreker is a former member of a Kurdish Islamic party who joined Ansar al-Islam after its formation in September. Kreker replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae – an Iraqi Kurd who trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years – and changed his name from Warya Holery. Mr. Shafae is now Ansar al-Islam's deputy.

Another of the group's leaders, Abu Abdul Rahman – who, the Kurds claim, was sent to northern Iraq by bin Laden – was killed in fighting in October.

Commander Qada also claims that Ansar al-Islam has ties to agents of Saddam Hussein operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and [Ansar] al-Islam," he says from his military base in Halabja. "I believe that Iraq is also funding [Ansar] al-Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."

Barhim Salih, a PUK leader, says a second group affiliated with Ansar al-Islam is working from the Baghdad-controlled city of Mosul.