When the US Invaded Iraq, We Played Right Into Al-Qaida's Hands!
Were we tricked into the war in Iraq? It is possible that America's involvement in Iraq was, in part at least, orchestrated by al-Qaida. Has America become an unwitting partner in al-Qaida's nefarious plot to drag the world back to the darkness of the Middle Ages under the guise of Islamic rule?
Last week on BBC's Newsnight, Omar Nasiri (a pseudonym), a Moroccan double agent working for British and French intelligence, came in from the cold after seven years infiltrating al-Qaida. He claims al-Qaida "deliberately fed false information to the U.S. government in order to encourage it to invade Iraq," reported Gwynne Dyer, a London-based independent journalist. (Click the link to read his opinion piece in the Columbus Dispatch.)
According to Nasiri, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, leader of al-Qaida's Afghan training camps, told U.S. interrogators after his capture and torture 5 years ago that "Saddam Hussein was cooperating with the terrorist organization to plan attacks with chemical and biological weapons." In fact, Nasiri points out, this was the "senior terrorist operative" Colin Powell referred to when he spoke to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 while seeking U.N. backing for the invasion of Iraq. Apparently, either the US was lying or the al-Qaida operative was lying. Whatever really happened, the Bush administration latched onto this little gem to ligitimize the invasion of Iraq, falling neatly into al-Qaida's trap.
Exiled to the mountains of Afghanistan and looking for a foothold back home into the Arab world, al-Qaida had selected Iraq as an ideal base of operations for the jihad. Considered the weakest of the Arab countries, Iraq had a crumbling economy and Saddam was an incompetent and deeply unpopular leader. Al-Qaida felt Iraq was ripe for rebellion. By encouraging the U.S. invasion, al-Qaida was saved the expense and onus of fomenting its own rebellion against Saddam Hussein. The U.S. invasion has created exactly the conditions desired by al-Qaida -- a country in chaos, declining trust in the government, fear and distrust of the police and military, poverty, loss of basic social services and structure, isolation, increasing radicalism, increasing reliance on Islamic clerics for direction, a close and easy foreign target for hate and revenge. Every day U.S. forces remain in Iraq, al-Qaida grows stronger. Every day we stay in Iraq, we serve al-Qaida's purpose. Ironic, isn't it?
Last week on BBC's Newsnight, Omar Nasiri (a pseudonym), a Moroccan double agent working for British and French intelligence, came in from the cold after seven years infiltrating al-Qaida. He claims al-Qaida "deliberately fed false information to the U.S. government in order to encourage it to invade Iraq," reported Gwynne Dyer, a London-based independent journalist. (Click the link to read his opinion piece in the Columbus Dispatch.)
According to Nasiri, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, leader of al-Qaida's Afghan training camps, told U.S. interrogators after his capture and torture 5 years ago that "Saddam Hussein was cooperating with the terrorist organization to plan attacks with chemical and biological weapons." In fact, Nasiri points out, this was the "senior terrorist operative" Colin Powell referred to when he spoke to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 while seeking U.N. backing for the invasion of Iraq. Apparently, either the US was lying or the al-Qaida operative was lying. Whatever really happened, the Bush administration latched onto this little gem to ligitimize the invasion of Iraq, falling neatly into al-Qaida's trap.
Exiled to the mountains of Afghanistan and looking for a foothold back home into the Arab world, al-Qaida had selected Iraq as an ideal base of operations for the jihad. Considered the weakest of the Arab countries, Iraq had a crumbling economy and Saddam was an incompetent and deeply unpopular leader. Al-Qaida felt Iraq was ripe for rebellion. By encouraging the U.S. invasion, al-Qaida was saved the expense and onus of fomenting its own rebellion against Saddam Hussein. The U.S. invasion has created exactly the conditions desired by al-Qaida -- a country in chaos, declining trust in the government, fear and distrust of the police and military, poverty, loss of basic social services and structure, isolation, increasing radicalism, increasing reliance on Islamic clerics for direction, a close and easy foreign target for hate and revenge. Every day U.S. forces remain in Iraq, al-Qaida grows stronger. Every day we stay in Iraq, we serve al-Qaida's purpose. Ironic, isn't it?
