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Subject: Found: A Smoking Gun
Elbandeedo    2/11/2004 6:28:46 AM
NY Times article excerpt and link n the town of Kalar, about a hundred miles northeast of Baghdad, Kurdish villagers recently reported suspicious activity to the pesh merga. That Kurdish militia has for years been waging a bloody battle with Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and supported by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It captured a courier carrying a message that demolishes the repeated claim of Bush critics that there was never a "clear link" between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. The terrorist courier with a CD-ROM containing a 17-page document and other messages was Hassan Ghul, who confessed he was taking to Al Qaeda the Ansar document setting forth a strategy to start an Iraqi civil war, along with a plea for reinforcements. The Kurds turned him over to Americans for further interrogation, which is proving fruitful. The Times reporter Dexter Filkins in Baghdad, backed up by Douglas Jehl in D.C., broke the story exclusively. Editors marked its significance by placing it on the front page above the fold. Although The Washington Post the next day buried it on Page 17 (and Newsweek may construe as bogus any Saddam-Osama connection) the messages' authenticity was best attested by the amazed U.S. official who told Reuters, "We couldn't make this up if we tried." The author of the lengthy Ansar-to-Qaeda electronic message is suspected of being the most wanted terror operative in the world today: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, long familiar to readers of this space as "the man with the limp," who personifies the link of Ansar and Al Qaeda. On Sept. 24, 2001 — not two weeks after 9/11 — Kurdish sources led me to report: "The clear link between the terrorist in hiding [Osama] and the terrorist in power [Saddam] can be found in Kurdistan. . . . The Iraqi dictator has armed and financed a fifth column of Al Qaeda mullahs and terrorists. . . . Some 400 `Arab Afghan' mercenaries . . . have already murdered a high Kurdish official as well as a Muslim scholar who dared to interpret the Koran humanely." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/11/opinion/11SAFI.html?th (requires registration - not subscription) E.
 
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appleciderus    Fascinating...   2/11/2004 5:48:53 PM
...that 12 hours has gone by and not a comment from those who claim the war was initiated to benefit all those bogeyman in the Bush Administration. When they can throw "the fog" of misinformation around, they attack like piranha, when "facts" appear, they are noticeably absent.
 
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Elbandeedo    RE:Fascinating...   2/13/2004 8:10:08 AM
yup. particularly fascinating in his absence is our current favorite troll, ex-expat-or-whatever-sock-puppet-he's-using-today. E.
 
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ex-expat    Really Fascinating...   2/13/2004 11:07:24 AM
Yes quite facinating... that NOW the NY Times is credible - unbelievable. Really facinating... to associate the changing tactics/strategies of an insurgency that didn't exist prior to the Iraq invasion, with the reasons to go to war in the first place. That is quite a stretch, even for this forum.
 
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NewGuy    RE:Really Fascinating...   2/13/2004 12:26:44 PM
Hey ex-pat, Pray tell, did you simply miss the part about the report dated Sept 4, 2001 that implicated Al Queda forces being supported in Kurd areas by some of Saddams services, or did you just hope to ignore it since it vaporizes your argument? Admit it: If there was a NY Times article that claimed to have evidence there was -no- Al Queda presence ever in Iraq you would be holding it up in our face to advance your arguments, wouldnt you? And you claim -we- have filtered vision? NewGuy
 
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ex-expat    RE:Really Fascinating...   2/13/2004 2:35:54 PM
Well considering that the Kurds weren't exactly on the best of terms with Saddam poses another example of the bait-and-switch arguments for used by the Bush administration to rationalize our actions in Iraq. Fact is, Saddam was no more closer to Al Queda than he was the Kurds - in fact Al Queda was probably deemed a threat by Saddam (as proven by their chummy relations with the Kurds) But hey, why look deeper. Just go with your logic, warped as it is: that since the KURDS were in bed with Al Queda that makes it an obvious link to Saddam. Using that kind of logic I can easily see where a dental record from thirty years ago can be extrapolated to ascertain the whereabouts of an individual for the months before or after a visit to the dentist.
 
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sentinel28a    RE:Really Fascinating...   2/17/2004 2:16:11 PM
What would it take to prove to you that Bush didn't go AWOL? A time machine? Anyway, we pasted Ansar pretty well in the last unpleasantness, with the help of the Kurds. Ansar has ties to al-Qaeda, though they may not take orders directly from Osama. Al-Qaeda is HUGE--the very reason why they survive is that their organization is loose. Islamic charities that think their money is going to help crippled orphans in Afghanistan may actually be lining Osama's pockets. There is also the terrorist training camp near Salman Pak that was talked about a lot back in the fall, and the fact that Abu Nidal was in Baghdad when he died, and the fact that Saddam was supporting suicide bombers in Israel. There are still persistent rumors--from German intelligence, BTW, not the CIA--that Mohammed Atta was meeting with the Mukhbarat, not once, but several times in Prague. Do I think Saddam ordered 9/11, or had anything directly to do with it? No. He and Osama plainly don't like each other. Did he support terrorist organizations? Yes. Would he have helped the 9/11 hijackers if he could? Absolutely. We are his enemies, and I doubt Saddam would pass up a chance to take a shot at us--even now, in his little cell at the "undisclosed location." Besides, to find a "smoking gun" to convince the more left-wing among us, it would take an autographed picture of Saddam and Osama in bed together, with sweet nothing Post-Its as well. And even then.
 
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