al-Qaida / Iraqi link?

The Kurds on the other hand are loving life post-Saddam. They have been doing very well since his downfall.

ok McG, shouldn't put words in your mouth... :wink:

But how do you establish "a fair and representative government" until you have extinguished the fighters and established lor norder?

but you did say this just now

Quote:

The Kurds on the other hand are loving life post-Saddam. They have been doing very well since his downfall.

I really hope thats true believe me. But why do we never see any news picture stories about happy Kurds doing their life loving things?

(edited to reflect the suddenly calmer tone)

I am amazed that the person who seems to know more of the truth about Americans doesn't even live in America. We can all learn a lot from Walter Hinteler.

I am amazed that the person who seems to know more of the truth about Americans doesn't even live in America. We can all learn a lot from Walter Hinteler.

Mr. Clarke's ire is largely directed at the Iraq war, but its preparation was left to others on the National Security Council. He left the White House almost a month before the war began. As for its justification, he acts as if there is none. He dismisses, as "raw," reports that show meetings between al Qaeda and the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, going back to 1993. The documented meeting between the head of the Mukhabarat and bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1996--a meeting that challenged all the CIA's assumptions about "secular" Iraq's distance from Islamist terrorism--should have set off alarm bells. It didn't.

There is other evidence of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda that Mr. Clarke should have felt obliged to address. Just days before Mr. Clarke resigned, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that bin Laden had met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization. In 1998, an aide to Saddam's son Uday defected and repeatedly told reporters that Iraq funded al Qaeda. South of Baghdad, satellite photos pinpointed a Boeing 707 parked at a camp where terrorists learned to take over planes. When U.S. forces captured the camp, its commander confirmed that al Qaeda had trained there as early as 1997. Mr. Clarke does not take up any of this.

Quote:

... Just days before Mr. Clarke resigned, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that bin Laden had met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization. In 1998, an aide to Saddam's son Uday defected and repeatedly told reporters that Iraq funded al Qaeda. South of Baghdad, satellite photos pinpointed a Boeing 707 parked at a camp where terrorists learned to take over planes. When U.S. forces captured the camp, its commander confirmed that al Qaeda had trained there as early as 1997. Mr. Clarke does not take up any of this.

Link

Thursday, February 6, 2003 Posted: 9:05 AM EST (1405 GMT)
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell used electronic intercepts, satellite photographs and other intelligence sources Wednesday in an effort to convince skeptical members of the U.N. Security Council that Iraq is actively working to deceive U.N. weapons inspectors and was hiding large amounts of Weapons of Mass Destruction .

"I cannot tell you everything that we know," Powell said, with CIA Director George Tenet sitting behind him. "But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling."