Reply #41: Here's an interesting bit from back in March

[54anickel]

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5435.shtml

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As it weighs its options and seeks a UN formula that will defuse the political standoffs, the Bush administration has concentrated on both legitimizing the war and insulating itself from the potential fallout should civil war occur. Accusations against foreign terrorists, al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have risen in virtually direct proportion to US setbacks. Particularly noteworthy is a letter that surfaced last month that was allegedly written by Zarqawi, a Jordanian, to al-Qaeda.

According to US sources, Zarqawi allegedly leads Ansar al-Islam, a group that "clearly is supported to some degree by al-Qaeda", said US General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Describing Zarqawi, the US State Department says he is "a close associate of Osama bin Laden". But also according to official US sources, Zarqawi's relationship to bin Laden is "uncertain", and he instead leads a Jordanian extremist group, al-Tawhid. And most notably, a recent report by the intelligence branch of the US Department of State stressed that al-Qaeda and Ansar appear quite unrelated and independent of each other, though last Thursday media reports by US officials have again claimed the contrary. But while contradictions abound, the killing has continued, with speculation existing that the Iraq war's hawks are manipulating its description for their own purposes, Zarqawi's alleged letter providing an example.

In the alleged letter to al-Qaeda, Zarqawi invites the group to Iraq in hopes of initiating a sequence of attacks which will set off civil war. However, US officials have long claimed that al-Qaeda is already in Iraq. This past week, US civil administrator L Paul Bremer charged that the last several months have marked an upsurge of Iraqi attacks by "the professional terrorists of al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam".

Of course, a most curious thing is that if indeed al-Qaeda is in the country, why did it need to be invited to Iraq by Zarqawi? And the US military does claim the alleged letter is authentic. But such "confusion" has been evident since US Secretary of State Colin Powell's UN address of a year ago.

At that time, in an attempt to win UN backing for the Iraq invasion, Powell told the UN of a "much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network ... a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden". Powell also said that Ansar "offered al-Qaeda safe haven in the region" in 2000. And Powell also claimed that Iraq had a stockpile "of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent, rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agent, mobile production facilities used to make biological agents" and that it provided "training in these weapons to al-Qaeda".

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