in 2002? how could this be???? http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2069653,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1 [rquoter]Al-Qaida in Iraq leader believed dead Mark Tran and agencies Tuesday May 1, 2007 Guardian Unlimited Abu Ayyub Al-Masri, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq Abu Ayyub al-Masri, previously named as leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Photograph: AFP/Getty The al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been killed in a fight between insurgents north of Baghdad, the interior ministry claimed today. Brigadier General Abdul Kareem Khalaf told Reuters: "We have definite intelligence reports that al-Masri was killed today." Another source in the ministry said al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, had been killed. Brig Gen Khalaf said Iraqi and US forces were not involved. The US military said it could not confirm the death. In February the Iraqi government said al-Masri had been wounded by Iraqi troops but escaped in a clash north of Baghdad after soldiers stormed a base near Balad. Al-Masri, an Egyptian, assumed the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq after the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike in June 2006. The US government in 2005 set a $50,000 reward for al-Masri's capture, later raising it to $5m. Security experts say he became a terrorist in 1982 when he joined Ayman al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He probably entered Iraq in 2002, before al-Zarqawi, and may have helped establish the first al-Qaida cell in the Baghdad area. He had manufactured explosives in Iraq, particularly car and truck bombs, helped foreign fighters move from Syria to Baghdad, and overseen al-Qaida's activities in southern Iraq. Shortly following al-Zarqawi's death, militant websites identified Abu Hamza al-Muhajir as his successor in Iraq. US military officials said they believed he and al-Masri were one and the same. Reports of al-Masri's death came amid increasing friction between Sunni al-Qaida militants and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups in Iraq, particularly over al-Qaida's policy of targeting civilians through suicide bombings at mosques and markets. Iraqi officials have blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for destroying a holy Shia shrine in Samarra a year ago, an act that triggered reprisal killings from Shia death squads and ethnic cleansing in Baghdad.[/rquoter]
so what? are you saying US attacked iraq because it knew AQ was there in only in 2002 - 1 year after 911?
for some of you, we could find a video of saddam with his lips around bin laden's ****, inside the fuselage at salman pak, and you'd complain that it was irrelevant: Bin laden didn't look like he was enjoying it, and besides, a blow job isn't really sex. seriously, here's potential evidence that iraq was harboring an al queda cell before the invasion, and your first instinct is to try and find a way to dismiss it. at a minimum, the intellectually honest thing to do would be to say "hmmmmm, that is interesting, but i'd like more proof." almost makes one wonder who you think the enemy really is.
Pegging my BS meter. I dare not apply the sniff test. This story would be true if the US gets to decide if said person is radical Muslim the US gets to decide if said person is member of Al Qaida the US gets to decide AQ's organization chart the US gets to decide if said person is actually dead etc.
Actually it is worth checking out, but it isn't evidence of any collaboration. There were and are Al Qaeda cells in the U.S. That doesn't mean our govt. is working with them or harboring them. You are making a leap that isn't supported by anything even in all the "maybes", and "believe's" in your article. Bringing up the dubunked Salman Pak plane doesn't help your cause either.
Wait a minute - nothing in that article suggests that Iraq was harboring an al queda cell. It suggests that Al Queda may have had a cell in Iraq. You realize Al Queda had and has cells in the US, right? Does this mean Bush is harboring them? The reason it is dismissed is the volumes and volumes of evidence to the contrary. It's like saying that "ooh, when I look straight forward, the earth looks flat! Perhaps this is evidence of that. Why are you dismissing it?!"
hum... News reports are suggesting that Al-Masri has not been killed. (Denied by AQ in Iraq, and US military won't/can't confirm). And that this is misinformation being put out by the HW to deflect attention away from the four year anniversary of “Mission Accomplished,” and the official signing of Congress’s Iraq timeline legislation. Surely the administration wouldn’t do something as cynical as that? shame...
I don't know Major, until I see George Bush having full on sexual intercourse with Bin Laden, I'm not going to even consider the US and Al Queda are working together just because there are probably many sleeper cells all over the country.
thats the point.. it doesn't mean there are AQ cells in Iraq it doesn't mean AQ & Saddam were working together..
Me and Al Qaeda were having lunch at Dairy Queen the other day and he was like, "dude, I'm all up in Iraq like I'm all up on these DQ fries." And then I was like, "dude, those fries aren't nearly as good as the kind they have in France, where they invented fries." And then he was like, "for reals?!"
