"arete"
Do you think Al-Qaeda is the only terrorist group in world? Do you actually think the WOT is only about Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda?
"It is a known fact that Saddam Hussein provides financial and material support to terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, and the PIJ, both of whom are groups which the US is taking action against as part of the “War on Terror”. Saddam is also known to be providing refuge for terrorists wanted by America, Israel and other allies, such as Abu Abbas, who was behind the hijacking of the Achille Lauro and the murder of American Leon Klinghofer in 1985. "
"By removing Saddam from power, terrorist organizations will be deprived of yet another state which previously supported them, and as such, will have one less place to seek refuge, and will suffer from a lack of financial and
material support."
"This will deal a serious blow to the terrorists, weakening the threat they pose to the US and her allies. By ousting Saddam and continuing in the successes we have had against Al-Qaeda, we will be sending the terrorists and their ideology into, as President Bush so aptly put it, “history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies”. "
http://people.brandeis.edu/~united/articles/wotsuccess.htm February 18, 2003, 9:00 a.m.
Hand in Glove
Iraq and al Qaeda.
By Mansoor Ijaz
"The real danger Americans face today is not from Iraq's existing biochemical-weapons cache, but from Saddam's transfer of recipe books and formulas to al Qaeda, and access to the scientists who teach from them, for developing weapons of mass murder on site at its terrorist hideouts around the world. And not just now, but for decades to come. "
"...One such group, identified in Secretary of State Colin Powell's compelling presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, characterizes the new al Qaeda overlay model with alarming clarity. Ansar al-Islam, a northern Iraqi terrorist operation run by Kurdish Muslim extremists — many of whom trained at Osama bin Laden's terror camps in Afghanistan — is battling secular Kurds opposed to Saddam's rule in northern Iraq.
According to confessions obtained from al Qaeda subordinates arrested in the region in recent months, Ansar operates with the military and financial resources of Saddam's intelligence directorate, the Mukhabarat. The terror group, resident geographically in an ungovernable region along the Iran-Iraq border, is now capable of becoming an al Qaeda pop-up biochemical-weapons lab for the production and distribution of poisons whose recipes and formulas are provided by its state sponsors. "
"How much more data is needed to demonstrate al Qaeda's growing hand-in-glove relationship with terrorism's modern-day godfather. The sooner we dispel ourselves of the notion that forensic evidence is the only way to define terror links between states that sponsor terrorism and well-financed, ideologically driven terrorist networks, the sooner we will be able to effectively defend ourselves against their tireless efforts to destroy us. "
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-ijaz021803.asp "IRAQ: From Fear to Freedom
The Lessons of Halabja: An Ominous Warning"
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/iraq/warning.htm And it goes on and on.
No good would have come from not acting against Saddam, and a much much greater good has come from our sacrifices in ousting Saddam. Yes, we are paying a high price in American and Allied lives for the war. But the price to be paid for not fighting, would be much, much higher.
Do try to look beyond the end of your nose.