No. 2 Leader of al-Qaida in Iraq Killed

[GePap]

The point is that the precense in Iraq of radical islamist groups that might ally with AQ was small- these groups in Iraq had no ability to strike ouside of Iraq anymore than radical islamist groups with possible ties to AQ in Chechnya or Somalia did. The minimal threat such groups posed to any US interests prior to the US invasion made using them as a justification for sending 150,000 troops to depose a regime whose support for these small groups was dubious at best, non-existant most like, bull****.

At best they merited the sort of airstrikes we eventually did carry out, maybe even sending small teams of special forces, specially since these groups were mainly operating outside of those areas under Saddam's control, so with Kurdish support we could have gone after them. But again, using such small groups as justification for military action in the scale of the Iraq war is an absurdity.

[Sava]

Gepap

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
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[Sava]

Originally posted by Richelieu

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
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[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by GePap
The point is that the precense in Iraq of radical islamist groups that might ally with AQ was small- these groups in Iraq had no ability to strike ouside of Iraq anymore than radical islamist groups with possible ties to AQ in Chechnya or Somalia did. The minimal threat such groups posed to any US interests prior to the US invasion made using them as a justification for sending 150,000 troops to depose a regime whose support for these small groups was dubious at best, non-existant most like, bull****.

At best they merited the sort of airstrikes we eventually did carry out, maybe even sending small teams of special forces, specially since these groups were mainly operating outside of those areas under Saddam's control, so with Kurdish support we could have gone after them. But again, using such small groups as justification for military action in the scale of the Iraq war is an absurdity.

Exactly.


We should be contemplating Florida to retreive Orlando Bosch, who is a known and convicted terrorist being given sanctuary in THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

But hey he doesn't like Fidel Castro so he's our boy yay rah.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Zarqawi had absolutley NOTHING to do with Al Queda before we invaded.

Except being the leader of a terrorist group that was widely believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda, of course.

Believed by who? You and President Bush?

[Darkstar]

Believed by the fabulous Wacky Western intelligence. Prior to the full run up for the Iraqi invasion, almost no one outside the intelligence community had heard of him.

I remember it was reported at one time that he was paying the Kurds to leave him alone. That would have made it more expensive as well as more risky to send in special op team with Kurdish support to get him. And given him a chance of being tipped off that someone was coming for him.

[Ted Striker]

Bush fixed the damn intelligence and then turned around and scapegoated the intelligence community

That's dispiciable on two counts

[Berzerker]

At any rate, I find it ridiculous when people try to draw bright lines between "Al Qaeda" and groups like Ansar al-Islam. Given the nebulous nature of Islamic terrorism and Al Qaeda itself, it seems rather silly to limit our concern solely to terrorist groups that choose to include "Al Qaeda" in their names.

You think its ridiculous to make distinctions between terrorist groups? So if the Basque separatists blow up something in Madrid, the Spanish should launch an invasion of Ireland to get the IRA?

Zarqawi was training with Kurdish terrorists, if Tim McVeigh had blown up the Eiffel Tower, should France invade us because McVeigh trained with some militia here? Now, we had reason to go after Zarqawi regardless of 9/11, he allegedly murdered a US ambassador in Jordan. But to use him as an excuse to invade Iraq is BS and I'm saddened so many on the "right" dont understand that. As if supporters of the invasion need him anyway, Saddam murdered thousands and we're invading Iraq because of Zarqawi?
Thats like a prosecutor charging someone with 1st degree murder and adding a traffic ticket for good measure to convince a jury the accused is evil.

[Ted Striker]

Well said Berzerker.

It's pretty straight forward.

[Drake Tungsten]

You think its ridiculous to make distinctions between terrorist groups?

No, I think it is ridiculous to try to wage a war solely against "Al Qaeda" (whatever that actually is) while ignoring the myriad other groups who, if not officially a part of "Al Qaeda", are ideological allies and fellow travelers of that organization. There's little substantive difference between groups like Ansar al-Islam, Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Zarqawi's organization before he adopted the Al Qaeda mantle), the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (the group suspected of being behind the train bombings in Madrid) Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda et al. We're in a struggle against Islamist ideology, not just a single terrorist group, and it would be nice if some people would wake up to that fact.

Thats like a prosecutor charging someone with 1st degree murder and adding a traffic ticket for good measure to convince a jury the accused is evil.

That might be worth a shot if the jury doesn't seem to care about the 1st degree murder.

[Berzerker]

The jury did care about 1st degree murder, it invaded to get rid of Saddam and now an Iraqi jury will convict him. But to then suggest invading Iraq was justified because of some terrorist we want to kill was training right under our nose fly zone outside of Saddam's control is ridiculous. Its an even worse excuse than the WMD, that one had alot of people fooled by the administration.

As for the alleged relationships among various jihadist groups, the case was not made that Saddam was harboring Al Qaeda and even the Bushies implicitly acknowledged that when they went to Afghanistan to get AQ. To use Zarqawi as that link is one of the lies we were told, even Christopher Hitchens repeated this lie in his debate with George Galloway and "forgot" to mention that the guy was up in northern Iraq in Kurdish lands under US air protection, not sipping tea with Saddam.

Last night Tucker Carlson had a Bush supporter on to explain the paradox of Iraqis not being involved with 9/11 but now fighting us, something like 80% of the insurgents are Iraqis, not foreign "terrorists". If this is a war on terrorism, why are we now confronted with thousands of Iraqis who were not attacking us before we invaded?

The slogan "take the war to them" really means "turn Sunni Iraq into a meatgrinder". It follows the Cold War pattern of waging proxy wars in other people's countries and its an immoral policy. The only reason why the war enjoyed majority support was the sense we were doing Iraqis a favor. And the reason why so many people are still willing to give Bush a pass on the "mistakes" is because we can see Saddam sitting in a jail awaiting his trial.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Bush fixed the damn intelligence and then turned around and scapegoated the intelligence community

That's dispiciable on two counts

Bush declared war on Iraq as promised, despite having other significant military entanglements in Afghanistan etc. That's his fault. But the intelligence community got it wrong all on their own, in agency after agency in country after country. That's their fault. Whether Bush was willing to hear the truth or not is beside the point, as it was not presented to him as such by his intel chiefs. Colin Powell who spent a fair part of his life hearing highly classified intelligence briefings as a Commanding General, NSC staffer, National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during wartime (on the same country) and finally as Secretary of State believed that Iraq had wmd. It was the conventional wisdom throughout the community. Why do you expect a relative newbie like Bush to see what experts missed?

And btw, what the hell do you mean by "fixed"? Why use language that is stupidly imprecise and has been recently proven to be so?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Berzerker
The jury did care about 1st degree murder, it invaded to get rid of Saddam and now an Iraqi jury will convict him. But to then suggest invading Iraq was justified because of some terrorist we want to kill was training right under our nose fly zone outside of Saddam's control is ridiculous. Its an even worse excuse than the WMD, that one had alot of people fooled by the administration.

As for the alleged relationships among various jihadist groups, the case was not made that Saddam was harboring Al Qaeda and even the Bushies implicitly acknowledged that when they went to Afghanistan to get AQ. To use Zarqawi as that link is one of the lies we were told, even Christopher Hitchens repeated this lie in his debate with George Galloway and "forgot" to mention that the guy was up in northern Iraq in Kurdish lands under US air protection, not sipping tea with Saddam.

Last night Tucker Carlson had a Bush supporter on to explain the paradox of Iraqis not being involved with 9/11 but now fighting us, something like 80% of the insurgents are Iraqis, not foreign "terrorists". If this is a war on terrorism, why are we now confronted with thousands of Iraqis who were not attacking us before we invaded?

The slogan "take the war to them" really means "turn Sunni Iraq into a meatgrinder". It follows the Cold War pattern of waging proxy wars in other people's countries and its an immoral policy. The only reason why the war enjoyed majority support was the sense we were doing Iraqis a favor. And the reason why so many people are still willing to give Bush a pass on the "mistakes" is because we can see Saddam sitting in a jail awaiting his trial.

Somehow with all of that you still neglected to mention that Drake was right about not waiting for a particular Islamo-Fascist group to get the official Al Qaeda seal of approval before we begin to view them as at least a potential danger. I'm sure you were just getting around to it.

[Drake Tungsten]

The jury did care about 1st degree murder, it invaded to get rid of Saddam and now an Iraqi jury will convict him.

I thought the "jury" we were talking about was the international community, which really didn't seem to care about Saddam's history. I seemed to be mistaken in that assumption, however, so could you please tell me what jury we're talking about so that I can consider your argument properly?

To use Zarqawi as that link is one of the lies we were told, even Christopher Hitchens repeated this lie in his debate with George Galloway and "forgot" to mention that the guy was up in northern Iraq in Kurdish lands under US air protection, not sipping tea with Saddam.

You act as though Zarqawi never left the Ansar al-Islam controlled areas in Kurdistan, something which is not clear at all. Zarqawi was believed to have undergone medical treatment in Baghdad in May and June of 2002 after being wounded in Afghanistan. Zarqawi's organization at the time (which was seperate from Ansar al-Islam) was also believed to be operating out of Baghdad.

Now, how much of this is true is not known, especially given the well-known failure of our intelligence agencies, but you have to remember that this was the conventional wisdom at the time, so much so that Colin Powell was willing to make these claims about Zarqawi in front of the UN Security Council. The administration believed that Zarqawi, a terrorist with known ties to Al Qaeda, had received medical treatment in Baghdad and had set up his terrorist organization there. He was also working with Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan, possibly on ricin-based chemical weapons (his speciality). Now, are you saying that the adminstration shouldn't have been the least bit concerned about a connection between Zarqawi, Al Qaeda, Saddam's regime and Ansar al-Islam, given what they believed to be the state of affairs at the time?

And Sikander is right; it would be nice if you addressed the rest of my post. That was the real point I was driving at...