Here comes the next round of "Iraq-alQaeda connection" claims (+ facts)

[Bucky]

Mr Allawi is earning his allowance. He's releasing information plumbed from Saddam's governments' files to turn up any links between rat-hole boy and al-Qaeda. Here's the best they could do so far.

IRAQ: FORMER PM REVEALS SECRET SERVICE DATA ON BIRTH OF AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ

Baghdad, 23 May (AKI) - The number two of the al-Qaeda network, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited Iraq under a false name in September 1999 to take part in the ninth Popular Islamic Congress, former Iraqi premier Iyad Allawi has revealed to pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. In an interview, Allawi made public information discovered by the Iraqi secret service in the archives of the Saddam Hussein regime, which sheds light on the relationship between Saddam Hussein and the Islamic terrorist network. He also said that both al-Zawahiri and Jordanian militant al-Zarqawi probably entered Iraq in the same period.

"Al-Zawahiri was summoned by Izza Ibrahim Al-Douri – then deputy head of the council of the leadership of the revolution - to take part in the congress, along with some 150 other Islamic figures from 50 Muslim countries," Allawi said.

According to Allawi, important information has been gathered regarding the presence of another key terrorist figure operating in Iraq - the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"The Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi entered Iraq secretly in the same period," Allawi affirmed, "and began to form a terrorist cell, even though the Iraqi services do not have precise information on his entry into the country," he said.

Not content with these facts, our friends on the right are trying to edit these realities judiciously in order to make the case that Iraq somehow sponsored al-Qaeda and its efforts to build a cell in Iraq.

Note that the same criterion is not being made with regards the al-Qaeda cells in Florida.

[spooked911]

1. Oh crap. At least it is in an obscure news site but this will keep the

wingnuts frothing at the mouth for a while.

Funny how the right-wing thinks the media is biased but in the OTHER direciton of course. So the wingnuts' lunacy makes the MSM think they are being balanced when we complain from the left.

Crap.

[Bucky]

3. Ah, you see the big picture

Actually conservatives have been whining about "liberal bias" for so long for a reason. It gives them leverage to get their views heard and it keeps the media on their toes. Liberals have just started playing this game since the middle Clinton years and it's just now starting to pay off with token liberal talk shows and actual liberal commentators countering the rabid assortment of rightwing talking heads.

Obviously we need to keep the pressure up from our side, but then that's more or less what the Founders intended with the whole Freedom of the Press thing in 1789.

[Igel]

2. Not a new claim. It's been out there for a while.

There are odd connections here and there ... it looks like Saddam didn't want to sponsor them, but didn't want to run afoul of them either. The Czechs continued to claim that the meeting they reported happened, but nobody really believed them. He minimal support at the very best, nothing much.

I figure that the rather notable Islamist binge that he engaged in the last 10 years of his tenure had a few different motives. It served to buy off the Islamists, and the funny dance they were in gave him some breathing space, in exchange for very little on either side. In part, it had the same purpose as Stalin's sudden support for Orthodoxy as soon as the German troops came pouring across the Soviet border. It also served as a backup in case he was sufficiently threatened. There are others, but they don't come to mind.