Posted on 04/27/2004 2:12:25 AM PDT by Beckwith
ABC World News Now. April 27, 2004
In an interview broadcast by ABC's World News Now, the leader of the Al Qaeda cell organizing the explosive and chemical attack on the Jordanian security headquarters and the American Embassy in Jordan stated that he received his training from Al-Zawahiri in Iraq, prior to the fall of Afghanistan.
I gather from JohnGalt's posts that his "answer" is that we cannot put any stock whatsoever in anything this guy says, because he's associated with Ahmed Chalabi. Like, he was just misquoted by his translator, or something. (LOL) And let's not forget he is associated somehow with Chalabi so everything he says, even "2+2=4", is a lie. Did I mention he's associated with Chalabi somehow? Chalabi!!!
Seems pretty weak to me but I guess that's the best anti Salman Pak talking-point they've got at this point.
Kurdistan remains as isolated from the rest of Iraq as it was throughout the 1990s, when Baghdad withdrew from three Kurdish governorates, imposed an internal blockade and left them to fend for themselves. Today's isolation is more voluntary. The Kurds were allies of the US in their war against Saddam Hussein and when Baghdad fell on April 9. hundreds of thousands danced in the streets. "Now we are Iraqis," a young man had shouted in Sulaimaniyah over the celebratory honking of car horns. "I can study in Baghdad. I can travel. I can join the world," he added, echoing others who said they were celebrating not only the fall of a hated oppressor but the end of their seclusion. Seven months on there has been little reintegration. Prospering from increased security and trade, Kurdistan remains an entity unto itself, detached from the crisis gripping the rest of Iraq. Though the violence in the south is a topic of conversation, Kurds see it as "their" problem. Though less inclined to conspiracy theories than many Middle Eastern people, they ask if the Americans are stupid, or really want it to go so badly. "Us" meets "them" only in "newly-liberated" Kirkuk, Khanaqin, and to a lesser extent Mosul and the towns and villages in between. These traditionally Kurdish areas lay outside the "green line" separating the self-governing governorates from the rest of Iraq after 1991. But they were always seen as Kurdish, separated from the rest only by the force of the regime.
The Weakly Standard is a perfect magazine for you. Will you be voting for Kerry in November as well?
That's odd. You must have an awfully pathological definition of "media". Under the normal definition, all magazines are "media".
In a press conference Friday, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of land forces in Iraq, said that under the directive there "will be no militias inside of Iraq," but added that the Kurdish pesh merga forces "are a different story." "The pesh mergas fought with coalition forces and we look to leave them with some of their forces north of the green line." He was referring to the line that once divided the Kurds in two self-governing enclaves in the north from the Iraq that was under the control of Saddam Hussein.
Under an 11-year-old arrangement after the Persian Gulf War, the PUK and a rival Kurdish faction control three semi-autonomous provinces in northern Iraq.
Crafty question, but it's meaningless. Statistically speaking, we should be at war with AUTOMOBILES, if we asked the question like that. Here's a better: which of those two groups would more likely kill you because you are an American?
For crying out loud. A subsidiary of AQ. Nice try.
Anyway, let's pretend you're right it's about links to "Ansar al-Islam not Al Qaeda". Then why in the heck did you bring up "9.11"?
If there is proof - not association - of SH running the Ansar camp, fine. People have been asserting that for two years, but they haven't proven it yet. My position is that the "information" in the posted article - that the Jordan terrorist got training or hooked up with Zarqawi in Iraq - does not constitute proof of Baghdad's involvement because Baghdad did not control the area where Ansar was HQ'd. That's it. I'm not arguing about other proof, and you aren't presenting any. But the posted article at the top of the thread does not even begin to provide the kind of "vindication" you are crowing about.
If there is proof - not association - of SH running the Ansar camp, fine. People have been asserting that for two years, but they haven't proven it yet. My position is that the "information" in the posted article - that the Jordan terrorist got training or hooked up with Zarqawi in Iraq - does not constitute proof of Baghdad's involvement because Baghdad did not control the area where Ansar was HQ'd. That's it. I'm not arguing about other proof, and you aren't presenting any. But the posted article at the top of the thread does not even begin to provide the kind of "vindication" you are crowing about.
Please differentiate me from your other correspondents and address me directly (if at all), because I am NOT here claiming (as others are trying to do) that Saddam indeed "controlled" the area of Iraq in which the A-a-I base was set up.
Because, you see, I consider whether he "controlled" that area to be a *straw man*.
I'll grant you for the sake of argument that Saddam Hussein's forces didn't "control", militarily, or otherwise, the zone in which that base was located. That is was something of a lawless zone (because let's face it, it wasn't "controlled" by the Kurdish military either - are you claiming that it was? if it had been, the Kurds would have wiped out the camp - which contained their enemies you see - themselves).
Here's what you are missing however: the fact that Saddam's troops didn't "control" the region containing the camp, doesn't mean he didn't support it, monetarily, logistically, with personnel, etc.
The fact that something is in a lawless zone outside a region Saddam has "control" over, doesn't mean Saddam would not have been able to set up, or (more likely) encourage the creation of, a camp there. It especially doesn't mean Saddam would not have been able to support it financially, logistically, or with personnel.
In fact, as I said, if he *were* going to set up, or encourage to be set up, a camp of proxy jihadi warriors, a "no-fly zone" nominally out of his "control" would be the IDEAL place to do it.
He's not gonna let them set up camp in downtown Baghdad for crying out loud. See my point?
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