Iraq/Al Qaeda link?

[mnmoderatedem]

I keep overhearing War Party talking points about an Iraq/Al Qaeda link pre 9/11. I get the feeling this is a lot of hooey, much like the WMD intelligence as we're all well aware, or that the link is at a superficial level. Is there really any credible evidence of an Iraq/Al Qaeda link pre 9/11?


edit :spelling

[jsamuel]

1. no, in fact it is a waste of time to even argue with someone who argues

that their is a link...

there is no link

period

[Beaverhausen]

2. Make them prove it

[rbjensen]

3. I've never seen any

that convinced me 100%. If you buy the old adage "where there is smoke there is fire" you might be able to piece something together. Only thing ever made me wonder was that mural of Saddam grinning and smoking a cigar with the burning WTC in the background. But I think that was opportunistic more than anything else.

[EnfantTerrible]

4. This was already debunked

By the governments own investigation. A meeting took place Iraq and Al Qaeda in the early 90's, if memory serves. It never went anywhere... the WH's own commission (or was it the CIA?) said the connection was BS.

This is just more false reasoning for the illegal oil-grab in Iraq.

on edit: links

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030723-064812-9491r
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0627-01.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html

These will get you started...

[BlueEyedSon]

5. Saddam = secular, al CIAda = fundamentalist

get the picture?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

6. past tense - there WAS no link.

That no longer is the case.

Since we Accomplished our Mission, AQ elements have been streaming in. We had no control over the countryside, and even less over the borders. Some truly evil kurd elements have come in and are training others to blow things up. Afghani. Pakistani and Saudi radicals have come into the country because that is where the target is - us.

Even worse, because Rumsfeld sorely missed the boat, the dock and the beachhead with his invasion force, we left all conventional arms depots unguarded. ALL of them. They are now all empty. That means that the Baathists who hate us, along with the kurdish elements who hate us and think we stabbed them in the back before and will do so again (they are right), and the tribes from the swamps, and the Shia sects who hate us are competing with the above mentioned foreign elements about who can kill more US soldiers.

Now, that is what I call success.

Funny. The ones that are having the best success in Iraq currently, including
rebuilding medical centers and schools,
peace making
electrical supplies
diplomatic efforts
border control (including stopping radicals from entering Iraq)
are the Bloody IRANIANS. Bush's sworn enemies. The Axis of Evil Persians. In fact, they are doing more good than our Haliburton dudes, despite them stealing 10s of billions from us.

[thoughtanarchist]

7. only this. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the reporting.

This is a clip from a New Yorker mag article from March '02. The context is that, in the Kurdish North, the reporter was allowed to interview prisoners of the kurds who were suspected to be part of a local Iraqi terrorist group who claim al qaeda links. The reporter seems to make some leaps of faith to draw his conclusions and it all seems to hinge upon the allegations of the prisoners.

Also, this info is coming from the Kurds, who were psyched at the time for the US to overthrow Saddam so they they could set up an independent state. I think that tidbit plays a major part in the info they wanted to project.


"The allegations include charges that Ansar al-Islam has received funds directly from Al Qaeda; that the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with Al Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam; that Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of Al Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992; that a number of Al Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam; and that Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan. If these charges are true, it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda is far closer than previously thought."

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020325fa_FACT1

Edit to add: This article is subsequently countered from info from the 9-11 commission. as reported in the WaPo link above...

"The commission staff, in yesterday's report, said that while bin Laden was in Sudan between 1991 and 1996, a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan, and that he had a meeting with bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden was reported to have sought training camps and assistance in getting weapons, "but Iraq never responded," the staff said. The report said that bin Laden "at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan."

I think you can chaulk it up to media manipulation... I dug just a bit into the background of this "reporter" and found a very informative piece on counterpunch...

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02282003.html

"The piece was gratefully seized upon by the Administration as proof of The Link. The coup de grâce to Goldberg's credibility fell on February 9 of this year in the London Observer, administered by Jason Burke, its chief reporter. Burke visited the same prison in Sulaimaniya, talked to Shahab and established beyond doubt that Goldberg's great source is a clumsy liar, not even knowing the physical appearance of Kandahar, whither he had claimed to have journeyed to deal with bin Laden; and confecting his fantasies in the hope of a shorter prison sentence."

[FreedomAngel82]

8. No

The 9/11 commission even said there was NO link. Saddam and BinLaden were enemies.