[Age of Reason]

Papers found Saturday by journalists working for the Sunday Telegraph reveal that an al Qaeda envoy met with officials in Baghdad in March 1998

And that automatically makes those papers factual?

Smells fishy.

I'll just wait to hear if this story and those papers are verified.

[AmishDude]

You are right to be skeptical but it has been established that Saddam, like many other fascist leaders, kept meticulous records. We could speculate on why but I believe that they are such control-freaks that, since they cannot run everything, they want their subordinates' actions carefully documented.

[leather_strap]

>>Papers found Saturday by journalists working for the Sunday
>>Telegraph reveal that an al Qaeda envoy met with officialsin
>>Baghdad in March 1998

>And that automatically makes those papers factual?

I doubt also as the Sunday TelegrapH is a very cheap and populistic "news"paper. The Bristish Oberver writes about the same topic (www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,944586,00.html)

"Remarkable though it is, the find is unlikely to be the 'smoking gun' the US and Britain are looking for.

Representatives from the Mukhabarat are known to have travelled to Kandahar in the late Nineties to build links with al-Qaeda. Most analysts believe, however, that the ideological differences between the Iraqis and the terrorists were insurmountable.

The talks are thought to have ended disastrously for the Iraqis, as bin Laden rejected any kind of alliance, preferring to pursue his own policy of global jihad , or holy war. "

If one looks closely into the self-conception of the ideologies of Baathism and Al-Qaida, this seems to be closer to the truth.

"Ecspecially if one wants something to be real, one has to be on the guard when interpreting facts" (Niels Bohr)