How many terrorists were in Iraq before 9/11 ?

[sabra]

[mnmoderatedem]

1. A hell of a lot fewer

than are there now...

[Selatius]

2. Not very many

Nearly all who announced themselves were targeted by Saddam's henchmen. Secular Ba'athism and Islamic militant fundamentalism didn't go together too well.

[bullimiami]

3. there was the dilemna

saddam was strong enough to hold his secular goventment and fend off the extremist groups.

so you deal with 1 saddam or a bees nest of trouble.

bush was too arrogant and stupid to make the right choice.
he jailed the beekeeper and kicked the nest.

[grumpy old fart]

5. Bingo..........

And you can bet that within X number of years of our leaving, there will be another strongman "leading" the Sunni triangle.

[liberal N proud]

4. I doubt any

Saddam was a dictator who did not tolerate any dissension and was known to hate Bin Laden

[pocket]

6. I can think of 2

Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas.

[Frederik]

12. Abu Nidal lived there for a couple of years in the 80s

didn't he? He was kicked out by Saddam, in any case.

[pinto]

10. good point.

[democrat_patriot]

7. Zero. Nada. None

If so please list names and irrefutable proof they LIVED there. Not just 'visiting', or 'holding secret meetings'

[pinto]

8. One, and he was a contained, failing, despot wannabe.

We should have let the UN and time take it's toll....Iraq would've been better off and thousands of Americans, Brits, Iraqis, etc. would be alive or uninjured today as we speak. Ugh.

[Al-CIAda]

9. Look at the US gov'ts OWN reports of 2000-01 lists of terrorist

supporting countries. Guess who is NOT on that list.

[sabra]

11. yep, I remember Condi displaying that too...

[Monkie]

13. found one! The neo-cons favourite anti-iranian terrorists MEK

http://library.nps.navy.mil/home/tgp/mek.htm

From: Country Reports on Terrorism, 2004. United States Department of State, April 2005
"The MEK philosophy mixes Marxism and Islam. Formed in the 1960s, the organization was expelled from Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and its primary support came from the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein starting in the late 1980s."

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/052105Stanton/052105stanton.html

Iran Policy Committee: Pentagon mouthpiece, Israeli ally, MEK supporter

By John Stanton
Online Journal Contributing Writer

May 21, 2005—The Iran Policy Committee (IPC) has a website up and running at iranpolicycommittee.org.*

The IPC made the news in February when it released a report titled "US Options for Iran." In that report, the IPC recommended that a terrorist group known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) be removed from the US government's hit list
~snip~
Those two wacky thoughts should be enough to dismiss the 11 IPC principals, their mission and their clumsy report as nonsense. But inside the Washington Beltway, it's never wise to dismiss ignorance until performing background checks on the individuals and their affiliations.
~snip~
The IPC is supported by the neocon all-stars that we've come to know and love such as Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Michael Leeden, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, et al"

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050126-iran-game.htm

"The use of the MEK for U.S.-intelligence-gathering missions strikes some former U.S. intelligence officials as bizarre. The State Department's annual publication, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," lists them as a terrorist organization.

According to the State Department report, the MEK were allies with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in fighting Iran and, in addition, "assisted Saddam in "suppressing opposition within Iraq, and performed internal security for the Iraqi regime."

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, U.S. forces seized and destroyed MEK munitions and weapons, and about 4,000 MEK operatives were "consolidated, detained, disarmed, and screened for any past terrorist acts, the report said.

Shortly afterwards, the Bush administration began to use them in its covert operations against Iran, former senior U.S. intelligence officials said. "