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Edited on Tue Sep-28-04 01:46 AM by SoCalDemocrat
This is the Bush achilles-heel. He protected the most dangerous terrorist group in Iraq from attack by the Pentagon and U.S. forces on three seperate occasions. He sheltered them. Partly because the CIA was in secret talks with these supposed Al Qaeda terrorists, but mainly so Bush could use this as his #1 reason for invading Iraq as presented by Colin Powell to the United Nations on Feb 5th. It's all here...read it, understand it, and use it to change the face of this election. The National Guard and swift boats are small change compared to this story. Bush lied about the connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. More importantly he prevented the Pentagon from assisting PUK on three seperate occasions at taking out this terrorist stronghold. Today as a result, Ansar Al Islam working behind their leader Zarquawi, are responsible for the majority of terrorism deaths throughout Iraq. Bush refused the Pentagon's request to bomb Ansar Al Islam's camp three times, so he could have Powell go to the UN and use that camp as justification for war against Iraq. Ansar initially had just 200 fighting men. By executing the Pentagons plans with a PUK ground forces attack, supported by U.S. special forces, we could of wiped out that camp. Zarquawi was known to have been in that camp during that time. We would of very likely killed him as well. Today Ansar al Islam has claimed over 700 lives in Iraq, including many U.S. service personnel. They are the driving terrorist force at work in the region, and are lead by Zarquawi. Their numbers swelled in the intervening period, and now they have thousands of new recruits swelling their ranks. George Bush prevented the Pentagon from taking out Zarquawi and his terrorist camp, in spite of the grave threat we knew they posed in the region. All so he could try and draw two weak and innacurate links that Ansar was involved with Al Qaeda, and Saddam with Ansar. Bush was asleep at the wheel on 9/11 and the Republicans still gave him a pass. He is "tough on terrorists" they said. Ok, so we gave him another chance. What did he do? Dragged us into a war with Iraq, and in so doing allowed a dangerous terrorist base, THE terrorist base in Iraq in fact, to go unmolested so he could drum up support for the invasion. People of good conscience should not allow this act to go unnoticed and unchallenged. Irregardless of who our leaders are and what their political party, we must learn to hold them accountable for their actions or inactions. We hold the Dixie Chicks accountable for a minor slight, but we won't hold Bush accountable for this monumental failure and lie that has led to the deaths of hundreds of U.S. service personnel? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/--------- By Jim Miklaszewski Correspondent NBC News Updated: 7:14 p.m. ET March 2, 2004 With Tuesday’s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq. But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger. In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council. ‘People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of pre-emption against terrorists.’ ---------- CSMonitor has a good article with bacground from November 2002. http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1122/p01s02-wome.htmlKurdish officials liken this current front line to the Tora Bora standoff between Al Qaeda and US forces in Afghanistan late last year. Some say that Ansar has dug into the mountains, and built houses over their cave entrances in some of the 18 villages local commanders say are under Ansar control. "We can only fight Ansar from the sky, just as America fought the Taliban from the sky," says a senior Kurdish official. "This kind of work can't be done just with machine guns."
But several officials suggest that Ansar can be crushed handily with Iranian help, or even if Iran allowed the PUK - with which it has close ties - to temporarily enter Iranian territory and attack from behind. "If Iran helps the PUK to cross the border, the PUK can get rid of 80 percent of them," says defector Said. "If Iran engages itself, it would be a big victory. And if the US Air Force comes, I will not give them days, but hours. Ansar is not prepared for air attack."
The massacre of the Kurdish fighters in Oct. 2001 was the event that "made everything clear to me," says the defector. "Now I believe made many mistakes, that are not part of Islam.
"My thoughts and ideas have now changed," says Said, quietly. "If they did not, I would not be talking to you."
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Iraq's Tora Bora Al Ansar was based in the U.S. no-fly zone, on the Northwest border with Iran. Al Ansar wanted to overthrow Saddam, but also fought regularly with the PUK whom they disagreed with. Al Ansar had ties to Al Qaeda, some members shared training camps in Afghanistan. Zarquawi linked up with Al Ansar in 2000 or therabouts, and was in this camp for quite some time. While there he developed chemical and biological weapons which were unleased on targets in Europe.
The U.S. was fully aware of his presence and the base from the get go.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2149499.stm
According to this source, An Alsar was in secret discussions with the U.S. to help overthrow Saddam Hussein, which was also one of their goals. Al Ansar is also cited as being a secular leaning group, which was in conflict with PUK.
The Ansar Al Islam leader threatened to go on record and tell about his links to the Bush administration and the secret talks. Based on what we know now, this sounds extremely credible.
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http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030503_ansar.html
DUBAI, Feb 1 (AFP) - The suspected leader of a Kurdish Islamic extremist group threatened in an interview published Saturday to produce evidence of his contacts with Washington prior to the September 11 suicide hijackings.
" I have in my possession irrefutable evidence against the Americans and I am prepared to supply it ... if (the United States) tries to implicate me in an affair linked to terrorism," Mullah Krekar, who is believed to front Ansar al-Islam, told Al-Hayat newspaper. He dismissed as "fabrications" reports linking his group to Al-Qaeda, saying they were designed to justify a strike against Iraq. Krekar told the Arabic-language daily he had been approached by the United States before September 11.
" I had a meeting with a CIA representative and someone from the American army in the town of Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan) at the end of 2000. They asked us to collaborate with them ... but we refused to do so," he said.
British and US news reports this week claimed that Krekar, who has enjoyed political refugee status in Norway since 1991, and Ansar al-Islam would be key elements of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's proof of links between Al-Qaeda and Baghdad to be presented to the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
------------ Powell speaks to the UN on Feb 5th.
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm
When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp.
The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch -- imagine a pinch of salt -- less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote. There is no cure. It is fatal.
Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered al-Qaida safe haven in the region.
After we swept al-Qaida from Afghanistan, some of those members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.
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http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/526/1/3/
Powell claimed that Iraq has given safe haven to an al-Qaeda cell founded by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. But the New York Times revealed that a member of the Qatar Royal family has set up a safe house for al-Zarqawi in Qatar and provided him a million dollar bank account to finance his terrorist activities. The Bush administration has been silent because Qatar is the main base for the U.S. war on Iraq.
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http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0211-04.htm
Though Powell spoke of Saddam having an agent in the Ansar al-Islam camp, unnamed U.S. officials later explained in the Post that this agent might be spying on the Kurdish Islamic group, not running it.
In short, the Al Qaeda, Iraqi poison factory controlled by Saddam that Powell spoke of may not be Al Qaeda, may not be a poison factory, and is almost certainly not controlled by Saddam.
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http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/15381/ March 14th, 2003
Bush delayed until any attack on this terrorist base until he secured his case for war on Iraq with the bogus Al Qaeda-Hussein claims.
With such threats on the northern front, officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), who control the eastern half of the Kurdish enclave protected since 1991 by the U.S. no-fly zone, say that the final showdown with Ansar is coming soon and is likely to include American support. "We would like to finish them off before any attack on Baghdad," said Sarbast Mohammad, head of security for Halabja. "We are happy to work with the American army to do so."
Whether that help will arrive remains in question. President Bush's special envoy for Iraqi opposition groups, Zalmay Khalilzad, reportedly promised PUK leader Jalal Talabani in Ankara in early February to help snuff out Ansar with American aerial support as the first salvo of any war. Talabani's aides told the press soon afterwards that U.S. special forces snipers were scouting the valley, and that the PUK was supplying target information to American bombers based in Turkey.
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Then it appears Bush forgets all about Ansar once he's invaded Iraq. They forget that is, until Ansar starts killing U.S. service personnel.
http://www.meforum.org/article/579 Ansar al-Islam: Back in Iraq by Jonathan Schanzer
Months before the Iraq war of 2003, The New Yorker, Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times published reports about Ansar al-Islam ("Partisans of Islam"), a brutal band of al-Qa‘ida guerrillas based in a Kurdish area of northern Iraq near the Iranian border. U.S. officials pointed to Ansar al-Islam as the "missing link" between al-Qa‘ida and Saddam Hussein. When Secretary of State Colin Powell made the U.S. case for war against Saddam at the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he cited Ansar al-Islam as a key reason for invasion. Powell drew links among the group, al-Qa‘ida, and Saddam, citing Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents declassified upon the request of the White House.<1>
As war approached, however, the Bush administration said less about Ansar al-Islam and al-Qa‘ida. Rather, the administration focused on Saddam's attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction. After the war, it became a matter of common wisdom that Saddam had no links to al-Qa‘ida. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that the case linking Saddam to al-Qa‘ida was never "bullet-proof."<2> Former vice president Al Gore denied that such ties existed at all.<3>
But since the defeat and dispersal of Saddam's regime, U.S. officials have begun to talk of Ansar al-Islam once more. In July 2003, U.S. joint chiefs of staff chairman General Richard Myers stated "that group is still active in Iraq."<4> A week later, Myers revealed that some cadres from the group had been captured and were being interrogated.<5> The U.S. top administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer III, reiterated Myers's message in August, saying that there were "quite a number of these Ansar al-Islam professional killers on the loose in the country," that they were staging attacks against U.S. servicemen, and that U.S. forces were trying to track them down.<6>
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Too late however as Ansar is already well aware of U.S. plans and has been dispersing its fighters.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/2020/iraq030221_ansar.html By Kevin McKiernan
The secret Ansar report, which is dated Feb. 17, 2003, maintains that a U.S./PUK attack on the guerrillas will take place before Feb. 28. It says that Ansar guerrilla units have already been dispersed to at least six mountain locations and that fighters are instructed to infiltrate into civilian areas if the attack becomes too intense to maintain their positions.
Meanwhile, large numbers of PUK peshmergas — "those who face death" — reportedly are moving to Halabja, near the front lines of a ground battle between the Ansar militants and the peshmergas.
At the same time, according to the Ansar report, the guerrillas have planned ambushes and have dispatched special squads to attack U.S. forces making "weekly visits" to a PUK command center near the front line.
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January 2003, Ansar Al Islam still has not been taken out. By Jonathan Schanzer The Washington Institute for Near East Policy | January 17, 2003 From: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=5571
Today, Ansar operates in fortified mountain positions along the Iran-Iraq border known as "Little Tora Bora" (after the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan). There, the group's Kurdish, Iraqi, Lebanese, Jordanian, Moroccan, Syrian, Palestinian, and Afghan members train in a wide array of guerrilla tactics. Approximately 30 al-Qaeda members reportedly joined Ansar upon the group's inception in 2001; that number is now as high as 120. Armed with heavy machine guns, mortars, and antiaircraft weaponry, the group fulfills al-Qaeda lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri's vision of a global jihad. Ansar's goal is to disrupt civil society and create a Taliban-like regime in northern Iraq. To that end, it has already banned music, alcohol, photographs, and advertising in its stronghold. Girls are prevented from studying; men must grow beards and pray five times daily.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4428430/ Ansar-al-Islam eyed in Iraq bombings Al-Qaida-linked group behind majority of post-9/11 terror deaths
NBC News Updated: 3:29 p.m. ET March 2, 2004NEW YORK - In the immediate aftermath of the deadliest postwar bombing in Iraq on Tuesday, U.S. and Iraqi officials pointed the finger at the shadowy al-Qaida-linked terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, and its leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi. Only a month ago, U.S. officials released what they said was a letter by the Jordanian militant outlining a strategy of spectacular attacks on Shiites, aimed at sparking a Sunni-Shiite civil war.
The attacks "follow the blueprint laid out in the Zarqawi letter," one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, while "the multiple simultaneous bombings are a trademark of al-Qaida."
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Bush finally wakes up again from his slumber, and the U.S. bombs the Ansar Al Islam mountain base. Way too late. They're already entrenched by now throughout the country. Also, the vast majority of their members escape the bombing attack, which is not accompanied by a ground assault. Even more strange, the U.S. not only did NOT include PUK in a coordinated assault, which would of been more effective, but they bombed the PUK controlled town of Khormal in addition to the Ansar base. This might of been an attempt to appease Turkey?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81843,00.html U.S. Missiles Hit Islamist Strongholds in Northern Iraq
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq — As many as 40 American cruise missiles slammed into two mountain villages held by an Islamic fundamentalist group in northern Iraq late Friday and early Saturday, according to local Kurdish officials. U.S. officials had no comment.
Later in the day, an explosion at a roadside checkpoint nearby killed at least one person, but details were sketchy about what caused the explosion or how many people were involved.
"The indication is that at 100 people were killed or injured during the raids," said Mustafa Sayyid Qadir, a military commander with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, according to Reuters.
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