[quote name='CTLesq'][quote name='dennis_t'][quote name='CTLesq'][quote name='E-Z-B'][quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']OMG, if they were willing to bomb our embasies, blow up our warships, murder our soldiers, try and kill 30,000+ Americans on US soil, kill westerners at random when the liked us I'd hate to think of what they'd do now that they don't like us.[/quote]
You realize that we're talking about Iraq and the insurgency here and not al Qaeda?[/quote]
And Zarchowi works for whom?
Or are we going to play the legal entity shell game?[/quote]
And Bush had three chances to take out Zarqawi WITHOUT an Iraq invasion, and he took a pass on all three chances because it would've weakened his argument for war.[/quote]
He did? I have never heard of Zarchowi before Iraq?
Seriously, and this isn't a set up - where was Zarchowi set up?
CTL[/quote]
Here's the article, CTL:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind
Abu Musab Zarqawi blamed for more than 700 killings in Iraq
By Jim Miklaszewski
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:14 p.m. ET March 2, 2004
With Tuesday’s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq.
But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.
In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.
In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.
The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.
