[holden]

So, do you think the 2003 claimed in the article is right, or is it your understanding that there is clear evidence of Iraq-Al Qaeda cooperation in 2002 or even earlier?

HF

[jveritas]

There is no document which clearly states that Al Qaeda and Saddam regime were cooperating before 2003.

These what we have:

Iraqi Documents that I translated and posted on FR which clearly showed that Saddam intelligence service did train foreign terrorists but they did not call them Al Qaeda. One document was about a directive from Saddam on April 4 2003, shortly before the fall of his regime, where he ordered the foreign terrorists (they call them foreign Moujahdeen) to be treated with the same level as Iraqi Special Operations. These are the foreign terrorists who later joined terrorist Zarqawi and Al Qaeda or may have been under Zraqawi and Al Qaeda to begin with.

I translated and posted on FR an Al Qaeda document written by one of Al Qaeda terrorist leaders called "Saif Al Adel" about Zarqawi and his terrorist coming to Iraq in 2002 before the war to fight our US troops. Despite that the document did not say that there were any cooperation between Saddam regime and Al Qaeda the document stated that Zarqawi and his terrorists establish their cells in the Sunni areas in central Iraq. These areas were under the full control of Saddam regime and it would have been impossible that they were not aware of Zarqawi and his terrorists presence there. They just turned a blind eye and let them establish their terrorist cells.

Let me know if yo need some of the documents that I mentioned above and I will give you the FR links to read it.