Tuesday, May 01, 2007

The Iraqi Connection   [Cliff May]

Tom Joscelyn in The Weekly Standard on what George Tenet's book reveals about Saddam's links to al-Qaeda:

Tenet explains that in late 2002 and early 2003:

There was more than enough evidence to give us real concern about Iraq and al-Qa'ida; there was plenty of smoke, maybe even some fire: Ansar al-Islam [note: Tenet refers to Ansar al-Islam by its initials "AI" in several places]; Zarqawi; Kurmal; the arrests in Europe; the murder of American USAID officer Lawrence Foley, in Amman, at the hands of Zarqawi's associates; and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad operatives in Baghdad.

On Ansar al-Islam, Zarqawi, and Kurmal, Tenet elaborates further:

The intelligence told us that senior al-Qa'ida leaders and the Iraqis had discussed safe haven in Iraq. Most of the public discussion thus far has focused on Zarqawi's arrival in Baghdad under an assumed name in May of 2002, allegedly to receive medical treatment. Zarqawi, whom we termed a "senior associate and collaborator" of al-Qa'ida at the time, supervised camps in northern Iraq run by Ansar al-Islam (AI).

We believed that up to two hundred al-Qa'ida fighters began to relocate there in camps after the Afghan campaign began in the fall of 2001. The camps enhanced Zarqawi's reach beyond the Middle East. One of the camps run by AI, known as Kurmal, engaged in production and training in the use of low-level poisons such as cyanide. We had intelligence telling us that Zarqawi's men had tested these poisons on animals and, in at least one case, on one of their own associates. They laughed about how well it worked. Our efforts to track activities emanating from Kurmal resulted in the arrest of nearly one hundred Zarqawi operatives in Western Europe planning to use poisons in operations.

According to Tenet, al Qaeda's presence was not limited to northern Iraq:

What was even more worrisome was that by the spring and summer of 2002, more than a dozen al-Qa'ida-affiliated extremists converged on Baghdad, with apparently no harassment on the part of the Iraqi government. They had found a comfortable and secure environment in which they moved people and supplies to support Zarqawi's operations in northeastern Iraq.

Other high-level al Qaeda terrorists set up shop in Baghdad as well. From Saddam's neo-Stalinist capital they planned attacks around the globe ...

Zarqawi, AI, chemical weapons projects, high-level contacts, Egyptian al Qaeda members plotting from Baghdad: it adds up to a very alarming picture.

And after reading all of Tenet's chapter on Iraq and al Qaeda, it seems clear that neoconservatives weren't the only ones connecting the dots between these two enemies of the United States.

Me: The MSM doesn't think this is news? The MSM doesn't think this is worth sharing with its readers/viewers?

05/01 09:06 AMShare