The Pretender sez ...
"let me explain. The fact of the matter is, we were attacked by Al Quaida...not Iraq."
Here's an interesting article re: al Qaida terrorists in Iraq:
FROM JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN
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Iran supporting [/SIZE][/FONT]
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al-Qaida terror[/FONT][/SIZE]
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U.S. military, intelligence services now certain Tehran backing Iraq Islamists tied to bin Laden[/SIZE][/FONT]
[SIZE=-1]Posted: November 8, 2004[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]1:00 a.m. Eastern[/SIZE]
Editor's note: Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin is an online, subscription intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com – a journalist who has been developing sources around the world for almost 30 years.
[SIZE=-1]© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com [/SIZE]
Iran is covertly supporting al-Qaida-aligned terrorists in Iraq, not just anti-American Shiite insurgents, U.S. defense and intelligence sources say with certainty.
The acknowledgment of the long-held suspicion as certainty raises the stakes in Iraq and the Persian Gulf as President Bush begins his second term and Iran, with its nuclear aspirations, moves to the front burner as an international crisis in the making.
According to
Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin,
al-Qaida-linked terrorists have been observed moving supplies and new recruits from Iran to Iraq, say the sources. While it has long been known Iran was backing the uprising led by Moqtada al-Sadr in the southern Shiite region of Iraq, the Iranian ties to Sunni Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist leader who has pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, has not been certain.
The development is potentially explosive given the standoff between Iran and the West over its nuclear program and the mullah regime's desire to build nuclear weapons. It was Iraq's flirtation with weapons of mass destruction and support of terrorism that provided the impetus for the U.S.-led invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Iran no longer even denies that elements of Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al-Qaida, entered the country from Afghanistan following the U.S.-led invasion of that nation in 2001. Iran claims it offered no assistance to the group.
But some senior al-Qaida operatives who were among those fleeing to Iran after the Afghanistan war may have developed a working relationship with the Revolutionary Guards, a special military unit in Iran linked to Tehran's mullah government, say U.S. military and intelligence sources.
The 9-11 commission also found contacts between Iranian security officials and senior al-Qaida figures and found evidence that eight to 10 of the Sept. 11 hijackers passed through Iranian territory.
Iraq and Iran share an 800-mile border. U.S. officials say terrorists who cross over into Iraq from Iran most often head for Mosul, the largest Arab Sunni Muslim city in the north and an area where Islamic extremist groups are powerful. Others have been tracked going to Fallujah, now surrounded and sealed off by U.S. Marines who are expected to storm the city at any moment.
Links between Iran and al-Qaida are nothing new, however, the fact that the connections are now being taken seriously by U.S. senior officials who recognize the impact they are having on the ground in Iraq is explosive.
Back in June, former CIA analyst Douglas MacEachin, a member of the 9-11 commission staff, said Iran and its terrorist group ally Hezbollah were linked to the al-Qaida terrorist group.
Other U.S. intelligence officials said there is also evidence Iran is linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the officials, two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who were aboard the aircraft that hit the Pentagon, had stayed at the Iranian ambassador's residence in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, before entering the United States in January 2001.
MacEachin disclosed that the Iran-al-Qaida ties were revealed in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers residence complex that housed U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia. The bombing killed 19 Americans.
U.S. intelligence agencies mistakenly assumed then that, since a Shiite group was involved, rival Sunnis were not, he said. That's a mistake senior defense and intelligence officials are no longer making.
Iran's links with al-Qaida go back to at least 1995 when an Egyptian members of bin Laden's group, Mustafa Hamid, visited Tehran. He is believed to have met with representatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to discuss cooperation – cooperation that now appears to be a matter of fact.
Between the middle of 1996 and the end of 1998, 10 percent of all of bin Laden's outgoing satellite phone calls were to Iran, say U.S. sources.
In October 2000, Ali Muhammad, in testimony before the Southern District for New York federal court, described setting up meetings in the early 1990s between bin Laden and Imad Mughniyeh of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist group.
Bin Laden's No. 2 in al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was the long-time leader of Egypt's Islamic Jihad, which had extensive ties to Iran. Al-Zawahiri traveled frequently to Iran in the 1990s, and he is believed to have been one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks.
According to a European intelligence official, Mughniyeh, who reports directly to Iranian intelligence, met in Mashad, Iran, with a senior Iranian intelligence official and a "top deputy to Saddam Hussein in charge of intelligence matters," to discuss cooperation with bin Laden. This meeting reportedly took place the month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the U.S.
President Bush warned that any nation cooperating with al-Qaida would become an enemy of the U.S. In fact, in 2002, he singled out Iran for special attention.
"(Iran) must be with us or against us in the war against terrorism and make no attempt to destabilize the interim Afghan government," he said. "Iran must be a contributor in the war against terror; our nation and our fight against terror will uphold the doctrine, either you're with us or against us; and any nation that thwarts our ability to rout terror out where it exists will be held to account, one way or the other. ... If they (Iranians) are trying – if they in any way, shape or form – try to destabilize the government (of Afghanistan), the coalition ... we'll deal with them, in diplomatic ways, initially." U.S. officials in the Pentagon and intelligence services are now convinced Iran is actively undermining the occupation of Iraq – and doing so through direct collaboration with al-Qaida forces.
