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Return to Article: Iraq-al Qaeda links weak, say former Bush officials

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  Those dismissive speculations and conclusions seem deficient in the face of other significant and consistently accurate information.

  Considerable information - available in Arabic, Kurdish and English - exists about the nexus and the linkages (albeit indirect) that would show apparent and direct ties between Al-Qaeda Organization (Arabic: Tanthiim Al-Qa'ida) and Saddam's regime.

  While Saddam would never supply WMD components or capabilities to Al-Qaeda, a parallel and provable larger issue is the operational and influential ties between Saddam's intelligence & security apparatus (I found and counted nine different entities) and the Ansar Al-Islam militants.

  Ansari elements operated in NE Iraq until their dispersal during the last war. Since then, they have regrouped elsewhere in Iraq (in and N/NE of Baghdad proper), Chechnya and Syria. The ranks of Ansar Al-Islam included Al-Qaeda veterans of combat tours (in Afghanistan Chechnya, Bosnia, and Pankisky Gorge), who arrived and srved in something of a "road show circuit" for mobile and adequately-financed militant Jihadis.

  A number of the seasoned Al-Qaeda reinforcements augmented the ranks of Ansari combatants as small unit leaders and trainers on military and technical subjects.

  One would hope that the U.S. government's intelligence analysts apply an approach of conducting a RICO investigation when looking for "leap-frog associations" and deceptive inkages through third parties.

  Stephen H. Franke Posted August 9, 2003 3:06 PM