A reminder about Zarqawi...before the invasion

Not that it will matter but hey, makes me feel better.

just before the election. The White House falsely claimed (lied) that the story wasn't true after NBC aired it. The Journal later found out it was true, and found even more damning evidence.

I tore my hair out in 2004 waiting for Kerry to use this story against Bush, who exit polls showed got 19% of the vote based on his command of the war on terror. Kerry never used it though, and the rest of the media never picked it up. I don't know why.

About 30 of us here tried to get the story to snowball, and Skinner put in on the front page more than once, but it never caught on. I don't know why, but I know when it first came out some on the left said Zarqawi didn't exist.

If an event ever comes up to trigger it, I'd love to see this get air. It completely discredits Bush's case for the war in Iraq and also discredits Bush's entire justification for his presidency.

While ** was so disingenuous as to blame Saddam for harboring Zarqawi
and his contingent of al-Qaida, Zarqawi was operating in northern Iraq,
where Saddam had no control. Why could not Saddam root out these
terrorists from his country? Becase the US was enforcing the "no fly"
zone! Zarqawi was operating under our protection!

and their primary target was the Kurds. They were also outside the no-fly zone.

i was just reading several other threads and people are moaning about the jordan attacks being credited to zarqawi, as if that helps bush's case. i too was astonished that kerry didnt hammer this point as it exposes the bogus nature of the administrations whole war on terror. if this story can gain currency people will realize that the continuing escalation of terror around the world is the result of, not in spite of bush's efforts. thanks for posting this, i was thinking of trying to track it down myself as this is of vital importance in getting people to realize how bushgang used terror threats to get into the iraq war, and how catastrophic the implcations are for really stopping the spread of terrorism around the world.

... because two or three days before the beginning of the invasion, there was a story, about the village al-Zarqawi was supposedly at, in northeastern Kurdistan, being bombed because it was suspected that Zarqawi was there, and was teaching the villagers to make chemical poisons such as ricin and other chemical weapons. Supposedly, the CIA and a Special Forces team were there inspecting the area after the bombing and found zero evidence of either al-Zarqawi or chemical weapons manufacturing.

As the story went then, the US attacked the village based upon "intelligence" saying that a one-legged man was sighted there accompanied by an Iraqi military officer. This so-called evidence was highly dubious, because the area was not only well past the autonomous region border where Iraqi troops did not go, but it was not even under the control of either Kurd political party.

Now, I think this is important, because this village was one which Ansar al-Islam controlled, and it was a central point in the administration's argument that Iraq was cooperating with and aiding al-Qaeda.

Now, perhaps the justification for bombing this area is just an early version of an evolving mythology. I don't know. But, it doesn't exactly jive with the Miklaszewski story.

Cheers.