The Xsociate Files

Would you be surprised to learn that the Bush administration had a known terrorist in their sights for over a year but didn't take action? You shouldn't be.

From The Age:

The United States deliberately passed up repeated opportunities to kill the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, before the March 2003 US-led invasion of that country.

The claim, by former US spy Mike Scheuer, was made in an interview to be shown on ABC TV's Four Corners tonight....

Mr. Scheuer was a CIA agent for 22 years - six of them as head of the agency's Osama bin Laden unit - until he resigned in 2004.

He told Four Corners that during 2002, the Bush Administration received detailed intelligence about Zarqawi's training camp in Iraqi Kurdistan

A startling revelation to be sure. So why didn't Bush order Zarqawi taken out? Because doing so would remove one of the rationales for the predetermined war in Iraq.

"Mr Bush had Zarqawi in his sights almost every day for a year before the invasion of Iraq and he didn't shoot because they were wining and dining the French in an effort to get them to assist us in the invasion of Iraq," he told Four Corners

"Almost every day we sent a package to the White House that had overhead imagery of the house he was staying in. It was a terrorist training camp . . . experimenting with ricin and anthrax . . . any collateral damage there would have been terrorists."

During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi's presence in the north of the country was used by US officials to link Saddam Hussein to terrorism.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear the rhetoric about how criticism of the President or the war is "giving aid and comfort to the enemy".

Update: Mahablog has more on this story.

Posted by The Xsociate on Sunday, April 30, 2006 | Permalink