Al-Qaeda's Opening Shot in Iraq War (?)

MMMMMM · #1 02-09-2003, 02:07 PM

Well this doesn't appear to me to be absolutely conclusive, but it does seem to lend some degree of additional credibility to the theory that al Qaeda and Iraq are working together in some ways.

(excert)
Al Qaeda’s Opening Shot in Iraq War

DEBKAfile Military-Intelligence Exclusive

February 9, 2003, 5:50 PM (GMT+02:00)

Saturday night, February 8, in the Iraqi-Kurdish city of Suleimaniyeh, al Qaeda and Iraqi military intelligence fired their first shot of the US-Iraq war - by assassination. They used their shared surrogate, the extremist Kurdish Ansar al-Islam of northeast Iraq, to eliminate the top command of the pro-American Patriotic Union of Iraqi Kurdistan’s fighting militia.

The three-way collaboration between Baghdad, al Qaeda and the Kurdish fundamentalist terrorists provided a live and incontrovertible smoking gun. The price was heavy, a grave setback for US war plans...

...The wiping out the PUK high command in Suleimaniyeh has alerted Western counter-terror agencies to the possibility of its being the precursor for another massive al Qaeda strike against the United States or its allies. Al Qaeda has taken advantage of the presence of its operatives in a given territory to hit pro-American military leaders present in the same place. One such operative is Abu Musaab al Zarqawi, who is in charge of terrorist activity in Europe and the Middle East, as well as the worldwide distribution of the network’s stock of chemical, biological and radioactive weapons. It is therefore possible that the murder of the Kurdish commanders signals the next major al Qaeda outrage.

According to our sources, Ansar al-Islam is rife both with Zarqawi’s men and also Iraqi military intelligence officers, under the command Colonel Abu Wale. These officers have been training al Qaeda operatives in the use of forbidden weapons. In a special DEBKAfile report published on Saturday, February 8, the secret al Qaeda base for its joint operations with Iraqi military intelligence was revealed as being located in the town of Tajdori, 150 km northeast of Baghdad. (end excerpt)

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=257

IrishHand · #2 02-09-2003, 02:24 PM

lol

Now there's a reliable source of news. Their "International" news has the following subcategories:

Bin Laden Terror
Terrorism
Intelligence

Guess there's not much more to the international scene than that. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] I'll be nice and refrain from commenting on their "Regions" of the world.

MMMMMM · #3 02-09-2003, 02:51 PM

It's a specialty site. Sorry if that went over your head somehow.

IrishHand · #4 02-09-2003, 04:12 PM

I realize that. I also realize that you'd have a tough time coming up with a more biased site.

MMMMMM · #5 02-09-2003, 04:38 PM

Bias isn't the point, information is. I don't care about opinions regarding al Qaeda and Iraq and the Middle East, I care about facts. Assimilate the information into your overall picture, weighting it accordingly and discounting it to some degree as you may see fit. Continue building the larger picture.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle, and every bit of information helps, even if the source may be biased. Surely the CIA collects information from biased sources and biased individuals?

IrishHand · #6 02-09-2003, 04:41 PM

Of course the CIA does. And if they put up a "news" website, I would understand that it would be horrendously biased and unreliable - that's my point.

nicky g · #7 02-10-2003, 07:02 AM

I don;t see any evidence that either al-Qaida or Baghdad were involved in this. Maybe they were, but the article doesn't offer any. I see two rival Kurdish factions continuing to fight each other, as they've done for a while now.

MMMMMM · #8 02-10-2003, 03:42 PM

The Associated Press article I read today in our local newspaper also stated that the group is linked to al-Qaeda.

Looks like DEBKAfile was ahead of the pack on this one.

nicky g · #9 02-11-2003, 07:02 AM

Or that they took the story from DEBKAfile? THey can state it all they want but they've yet to show any evidence. Furthermore, they haven't given any evidence to link Ansar to Bghdad, withot which their whole case falss apart.

MMMMMM · #10 02-11-2003, 10:34 AM

Would AP be likely take the article from them without having some sort of confirming facts available? (I don't know the answer to that question;-))

Anyway it's not a court of law, it's just a newspaper article. If news articles tried to prove every thing in their stories, they would be books. I just noted that UPI today referred to bin Laden as "allegedly" being linked to al Qaeda--I guess that's another way to handle matters;-)

My guess is that the group in question which committed the assassination is indeed linked to al Qaeda, as both DEBKA and AP stated. I don't believe that it has to be true, but I don't think it makes sense to assume it's untrue unless we have evidence to the contrary. My approach is to weight it somewhat and keep accumulating information.