"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 02:07:00 GMT, "Jarg"
wrote:

Those between Iraq and Al Qaeda are well know.

Really ? Cheney didn't sound so sure.

There were _NO_ ties between the Ba'athist Iraqi government
and al Qaeda. It is politically expedient to claim there were, and
Bush has lied on that basis for the last three years.

If you want to claim this is true, show some evidence. We're still
waiting.



There is no controversy about the ties among informed people, only about the
extent and significance of such ties. The 9/11 Commission

According to two Justice department reports during the Clinton
administration, such ties existed. One report stated "In addition, al Qaeda
reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not
work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically
including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the
government of Iraq."

CIA director Tenet has testified that "We have solid reporting of senior
level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible
information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and
reciprocal nonaggression." and "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda
leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD
capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to
al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional
bombs."

Richard Minter has detailed the following connections:

* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated
the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He
fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in
Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house
and monthly salary.

* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special
Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and
met with officials from Saddam's mukhabarat, its external intelligence
service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin
Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on
February 6, 2003.

* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed
meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994,
when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.

* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum,
according to Mr. Powell.

* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the
mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all
terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United
Nations.

* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a
senior officer in Iraq's mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy
mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda
men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," the
Guardian reported.

* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was
arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to
Jane's Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane's reported
that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al
Zawahiri, now al Qaeda's No. 2 man.

There is plenty of information abailable, you just have to be willing to
look.

Jarg