US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

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The USA invaded Iraq March 2003 when the then Iraq government ignored USA government requests and would not stop harboring (i.e., allowing) al Qaeda training camps in Iraq because that harboring is a threat to our way of life.

If that was the reason the US invaded Iraq, why wasn't that on the ever changing list of reasons cited by Bush to justify the invasion?

The USA invaded Iraq March 2003 when the then Iraq government ignored USA government requests and would not stop harboring (i.e., allowing) al Qaeda training camps in Iraq because such harboring is a threat to our way of life. The USA invaded and destroyed the al Qaeda training camps in Iraq, and began the process of replacing the then Iraq government with a democratic government in order to reduce the probability that al Qaeda would return and re-establish its training camps when the USA left Iraq.

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Osama's deputy Turabi had ties to Iraq and through him provided Osama a connection to Iraq. Osama helped form Ansar al-Islam.

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The non-partisan 9/11 Commission Report in Chapter 2.4, page 61, note 54".
www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm
To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi [Bin Laden's Sudanese deputy] reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.54

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By the time of the invasion of Iraq, Ansar al-Islam had grown significantly.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam
Ansar al-Islam (i.e., Supporters or Partisans of Islam) is a Kurdish Sunni Islamist group, promoting a radical interpretation of Islam and holy war. At the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq it [i.e., Ansar al-Islam] controlled about a dozen villages and a range of peaks in northern Iraq on the Iranian border.

AI [I.E., Ansar al-Islam] is believed to be responsible for several suicide bomb attacks in Iraq, mostly in the north. The first such was at a checkpoint on February 26, 2003, before the war [March 20, 2003].

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Ansar al-Islam was formed in December 2001, a year and three months prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam
It [i.e., Ansar al-Islam] was formed in December 2001 as a merger of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), led by Abu Abdallah al-Shafi'i, and a splinter group from the Islamic Movement in Kurdistan led by Mullah Krekar. Krekar is alleged to be the leader of Ansar al-Islam. He has lived in Norway, where he has refugee status, since 1991. On March 21, 2003 his arrest was ordered by Økokrim, a Norwegian law enforcement agency, to ensure he did not leave the country while accusations that he had threatened terrorist attacks were investigated.

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Soon after the USA invaded Iraq, USA military forces attacked the camps of the Ansar al-Islam terrorists in northeastern Iraq.

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"American Soldier in Chapter 12 A CAMPAIGN UNLIKE ANY OTHER, CENTCOM FORWARD HEADQUARTERS 21 MARCH 2003, A-DAY, page 483, General Tommy Franks.
The Air Picture changed once more. Now the icons were streaming toward two ridges and a steep valley in far northeastern Iraq, right on the border with Iran. These were the camps of the Ansar al-Islam terrorists, where al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi had trained disciples in the use of chemical and biological weapons. But this strike was more than just another TLAM [Tomahawk Land Attack Missle] bashing. Soon Special Forces and SMU [Special Mission Unit] operators leading Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, would be storming the camps, collecting evidence, taking prisoners, and killing all those who resisted.

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When the USA military forces attacked the camps of the Ansar al-Islam terrorists in northeastern Iraq, their leaders escaped.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam
When the US invaded, it attacked AI [i.e., Ansar al-Islam] training camps in the north, and the organization's leaders retreated to neighboring countries. When the war in the north settled down, the militants returned to Iraq to fight against the occupying American forces.

Kara, if you don't already know, Ican makes it up as he goes along. I would advise you not to waste your time on him, but it's your party.

However, many other people do not live in my universe, either. I wait and listen.

dys...sometimes, boyo, you get me going.

I really don't want this story to be true...

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US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article325560.ece

Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused.

"We had all this SASO (security and stabilization operations) training back home," he said. "And then this turns into a real goddamned war."

Just as his team started to eat a breakfast of packaged rations Saturday, Bogert got a fire mission over the radio.

"Stand by!" he yelled, sending Lance Cpls. Jonathan Alexander and Jonathan Millikin scrambling to their feet.

Shake 'n' bake

Joking and rousting each other like boys just seconds before, the men were instantly all business. With fellow Marines between them and their targets, a lot was at stake.

Bogert received coordinates of the target, plotted them on a map and called out the settings for the gun they call "Sarah Lee."

Millikin, 21, from Reno, Nev., and Alexander, 23, from Wetumpka, Ala., quickly made the adjustments. They are good at what they do.

"Gun up!" Millikin yelled when they finished a few seconds later, grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding it over the tube.

"Fire!" Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it.

The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call "shake 'n' bake" into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week.

They say they have never seen what they've hit, nor did they talk about it as they dusted off their breakfast and continued their hilarious routine of personal insults and name-calling.

Some of the heaviest damage apparently was incurred Monday night from air and artillery attacks that coincided with the entry of ground troops into the city. U.S. warplanes dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs on the city overnight, and artillery boomed throughout the night and into the morning.

"Usually we keep the gloves on," said Army Capt. Erik Krivda, of Gaithersburg, the senior officer in charge of the 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2-2 tactical operations command center. "For this operation, we took the gloves off."

Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns.

Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, "The corpses of the mujaheddin which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted."

ITEM 2: AP: Scholar Says This Generation’s Muslims Face a Momentous Choice

Scholar says this generation’s Muslims face a
momentous choice

Nothing less than the very soul of Islam is at risk

By Richard N. Ostling, Associated Press
Friday, November 04, 2005 (Published in the Manila
Times)


LOS ANGELES: Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law professor at
the University of California, Los Angeles, has a
scholarly manner and speaks in soft tones. But listen
as he tells his story.

A Kuwaiti native, he was fascinated by militant Islam
as a young man, then evolved into a moderate champion
of democracy who suffered arrest and torture in Egypt
for his views. Saudi intermediaries failed to buy his
silence but long limited his influence by preventing
publication of his works in Arabic. He received death
threats over antiterrorist comments after the
September 11 attacks.

Now, as Muslim immigrants to America struggle to find
their voice, no one is more outspoken than Abou El
Fadl—driven by what he sees as a global crisis: the
fight between “moderates” and “puritans” to determine
who represents authentic Islam.

“Nothing less than the very soul of Islam” is at risk,
says the 42-year-old Abou El Fadl, who is calling upon
moderates to reverse their declining influence and
reclaim bold leadership of the faith.

This is a “transformative moment,” he says. In his
view, Islam is suffering a schism as dramatic as the
16th-century Protestant Reformation that split
Christian Europe.


Two main movements claim to perpetuate true Islam, he
says. On one side, the professor’s fellow moderates
uphold centuries of Muslim teaching and the beliefs of
an often-quiescent Muslim majority.

Their opponents, as he sees it, are puritans—he
dislikes the “fundamentalist” and “Islamist”
labels—who have won a remarkable following as they
have preached religious extremism and, often, carried
out acts of reprehensible violence in recent decades.

Eventually, one of these two rivals will achieve
near-total commitment from the world’s more than 1
billion Muslims and “the power to define Islam” for
the indefinite future—including attitudes toward
terrorism, he predicts.

Abou El Fadl depicts the contest in his new book The
Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists
(HarperSanFrancisco). It’s probably the most dramatic
manifesto from an American Muslim since the September
11 attacks.

Reaching this point has been a complex, dangerous and
sometimes lonely struggle for the author.

Abou El Fadl spent a decade in Egypt learning the
intricacies of Islamic law, then received an Ivy
League education in America (Yale bachelor’s, Penn law
degree, Princeton doctorate)—a potent and rare
combination. His library of tens of thousands of
volumes has long since spilled from his home into the
garage.

Yet as a teenager, he found the intense call of Muslim
radicalism emotionally satisfying, a feeling that only
dissipated as he studied Islamic legal traditions in
earnest. At Yale he plunged into advocacy of democracy
and human rights.

Abou El Fadl says he returned to Egypt in 1985 after
winning a key undergraduate honor and expected a warm
reception. Instead he was subjected to torture. “By
the third day in there I was praying I would die,” he
recalls.

His tormenters provided no explanation but indicated
hostility to his liberal political ideas. It took him
a month to recover, physically and emotionally, and it
was years before he returned to Egypt again. The
ordeal made him opt to become a US citizen, instead of
working in Egypt.

The professor reports that Saudi intermediaries made
three offers to buy his silence and that Saudi
pressure prevented publication of his books in Arabic,
an essential step for gaining any permanent impact in
the Muslim world—though some of his writings and
interviews are available in Arabic on the Internet. “I
felt I probably would not have much use in my
lifetime,”

because of the censorship, he says.

Yet some Arabic translations have finally appeared in
the Middle East in the past two years, and he expects
The Great Theft will eventually follow.

He was pleased by appreciative audiences last summer
during talks in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

A Christian expert, J. Dudley Woodberry of
California’s Fuller Theological Seminary, says,
“Muslims of good will are longing for someone to make
a case for moderation.”

That makes Abou El Fadl “a star on the rise,”
Woodberry adds.

“I hope he’s right. And for the West, he pretty much
is.”

Muslims who join Abou El Fadl in advocating moderation
include those associated with the Washington-based
Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy and
authors in the forthcoming anthology Islamic
Democratic Discourse (Lexington).

In that volume, editor Muqtedar Khan of the University
of Delaware will criticize Abou El Fadl as too
traditional, because he favors application of shari’a
(Islamic law) as interpreted by religious jurists.
Though Abou El Fadl has a liberal interpretation of
religious law and supports democracy, Khan says, on
this point “he says what Islamists are saying.”

The moderate cause also is embraced in group
pronouncements like one in July from 18 scholars of
the Fiqh Council of North America.

They declared that “targeting civilians’ lives and
property through suicide bombings or any other method
of attack is haram—or forbidden under the Koran and
Muslim law.

They mounted a ferocious effort. There were no qualms over stooping to emotional blackmail. Rebels were asked: "Are you going to vote with the police or not?" But the tough approach adopted by Hilary Armstrong, the Chief Whip, and her team appeared to have backfired. One left-winger said: "There are a lot of people who are very angry about what they see as appalling pressure to fall in line, particularly through the pages of The Sun."