Posted on 03/17/2002 11:01:06 AM PST by Carl/NewsMax
A report set to hit newsstands Monday documenting ties between Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence service and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization is being called "a blockbuster" by former CIA Director James Woolsey.
The New Yorker magazine report details cooperation between al Qaeda agents in Northern Iraq and intelligence operatives working for Saddam Hussein, Woolsey told CNN's "Late Edition," including:
*Details of the ten-year-long working relationship between al Qaeda and Mukhabarat agents in attacks on the Kurdish minority.
*Evidence that the Mukhabarat smuggled weapons into Afghanistan to help al Qaeda forces.
*Accounts of al Qaeda refugees being brought into Iraq.
The New Yorker report also quotes Kurdish sources as saying the CIA had no interest the Mukhabarat-al Qaeda links, prompting this reaction from ex-Director Woolsey:
"The CIA has over recent years not been real enthusiastic about the Iraqi resistance and I think that's a shame. If they got beat on this story by the New Yorker and (its reporter) Jeff Goldberg, three cheers for the fourth estate."
"In think (the New Yorker) piece is a blockbuster," added Woolsey.
Saddam leads a secular regime, the mullas hate him. In the eyes of the mullas Saddam is a bigger Infidel than George Dubya
Because they don't hate Saddam as much: He is an enemy of the Saudi royal family, whom Bin Laden et al see as evil and un-Islamic. He shares with them the immediate goal of getting the United States military out of the Middle East in general and Saudi Arabia in particular. He hates Israel with a passion and dreams of her destruction, just as Al-Qaeda and most other Islamists.
They have a natural alliance of mutual interests, and that's more important to them than dogmatic differences.
Really. Guess I missed the reports of planes crashing into bagdad skyscrapers.
Speaking of, do you think CNN has their cameras set up yet?;-)
Islamic fundementalists are the greatest single threat to Saddams power,
Saddam is alot of things, but I am really not convinced he is a supporter of Islamic terrorists
LOL, if saddam can figure it out, CNN may also.
Where does that come from? It defies the Arab logic of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend".
So then I guess the mullahs will be sending back the aid they got from China and North Korea?
Well, not all of Baghdad, just Saddam's palaces, the Republican Guard and his facilities for making nukes, bio-weapons and chemical weapons. That's all and we'll liberate the Iraqi people, whose reaction will be just like the Afghanis. It doesn't make sense to wait for Saddam to attack us again and again and again.
Really ? Maybe ATTA went to Prague to meet the iraqi's about vacationing in their wonderful country.
Perhaps not in general, but alliances are always shifting in the Arab world. It could be that Saddam is providing support to al Qaeda for the same reason that the Saudis pay off Islamic fundies and propagandize against Israel and America: to deflect anger and rage away from themselves and onto us.
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