Iraq and Al Queda: How many links before it's a chain?

[Annie]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/860ydczr.asp

Another Link in the Chain
The role of Saddam and al Qaeda in the creation of Ansar al Islam.
by Stephen F. Hayes & Thomas Joscelyn
07/22/2005 9:00:00 AM

AS THE WAR with Saddam's Iraq approached, a small group of terrorists in Kurdish-controlled Iraq garnered a significant amount of news coverage. Senior-level Bush administration officials had claimed that this group, Ansar al Islam, represented a key link between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. There was evidence, after all, that Saddam's intelligence operatives funded and supplied the al Qaeda terrorists who joined this group's ranks in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan. That evidence was hotly contested for months until the story of Ansar al Islam gradually receded from the headlines. Today, the group is hardly even mentioned--if at all--in above-the-fold stories by the U.S. press.

Surprisingly, the European press tells a different story. Scanning press accounts from around Europe, the terrorist group most frequently named, besides al Qaeda, is Ansar al Islam.

In France, according to one press account, authorities "launched a preventive operation . . . targeting highly radical individuals who have visited Syria and Iraq on several occasions." This group was reportedly "in contact with the Ansar al Islam." According to the German press, Ansar al Islam is the "target of Germany-wide police action" and more than several individuals have been arrested for alleged ties to the group. The CIA is accused of abducting the influential Islamist imam, Abu Umar, in Italy and the press there says he is "thought to be a member of the terrorist network known as Ansar al-Islam." According to one account in the Spanish press, authorities there recently "disbanded a terror ring linked

to the Ansar al-Islam."

For an organization established in late 2001 and described at that time as a small, motley collection of jihadists, Ansar al Islam seems today to have a vast, transnational network.

All of which raises two intriguing questions: How can we explain the reporting that describes a transformation of this regional terrorist group into an international terrorist superpower? And what more do we know about the Iraqi regime's role in its founding?

TO BE SURE, part of the disparity between the group's originally reported size and its current international stature lies in the reporting itself. It is often easier to think about and describe the vast Islamist terror network using a common banner. After all, these terror networks are comprised of a seemingly endless array of connections. Thus, what many European reporters and intelligence officials conflate into "Ansar al Islam" is, most likely, a much more complicated web of entities and individuals who would not think of themselves as belonging to a single Kurdish terrorist group.

Yet, by their shorthand references to this network as "Ansar al Islam," European investigators and the reporters who cover them convey an important fact: The terrorists in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain are all connected--in one way or another--to the same Iraqi-based network which spawned the Kurdish-based group just 10 days prior to September 11, 2001. Therein lies the controversy....

 

[Gabriella84]

Show me where a legitimate news source says this is a "chain," and not some knee-jerk right wing garbage disposal.

 

[-Cp]

Show me where a legitimate news source says this is a "chain," and not some knee-jerk right wing garbage disposal.

Psst.. Gabby... over here... .this is from ABCNews back in 1994:

http://207.115.70.82/files/binladen061704.mpg

 

[Gabriella84]

I don't have a highspeed connection on my laptop. You will need a hard source.

 

[-Cp]

I don't have a highspeed connection on my laptop. You will need a hard source.

You don't need a high-speed connection to download that...

 

[Annie]

Show me where a legitimate news source says this is a "chain," and not some knee-jerk right wing garbage disposal.

You are such a child. Columbia is one of the most prestigious journalism schools in the country. Ever hear of the Columbia Journalism Review?

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard. Before joining The Weekly Standard, Hayes was a senior writer for National Journal's Hotline. He also served for six years as Director of the Institute on Political Journalism at Georgetown University. His work has appeared in the New York Post, the Washington Times, Salon, National Review, and Reason. He has been a commentator on CNN, "The McLaughlin Group," the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC, and C-SPAN.

A graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and DePauw University, Hayes was born and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

 

[Annie]

I don't have a highspeed connection on my laptop. You will need a hard source.

Gabby, there is help for learning disabilities.