White House spokesman Ari Fleischer confirmed yesterday terrorist detainees from Afghanistan have implicated Iraq in providing training and support to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.
WorldNetDaily reported exclusively that Iraqis are among the detainees captured in Afghanistan.
Fleischer said the U.S. knows Iraq has supported al-Qaida in the past and there have been “contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of the al-Qaida organization, going back for quite a long time.”
“We know, too, that several of the detainees, particularly some of the high-level detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to al-Qaida and chemical weapons development,” said Fleischer. “There are contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida. We know that Saddam Hussein has a long history of terrorism in general. And again, if you are waiting for the smoking gun, the problem is, when you see the smoke coming out of the gun, it’s too late; the damage has been done.”
Fleischer hinted that more would be forthcoming on this connection – perhaps even in tonight’s State of the Union address.
“One factor I think you also have to consider is given the fact that Afghanistan provided a very large training ground and operational ground to al-Qaida, many of their needs were taken care of in Afghanistan until Sept. 11, and then their activities in Afghanistan have been widely disrupted,” he said. “And this is an unfolding story, and I think you’ll hear more of it.”
President Bush is expected to spell out the threat Iraq poses to U.S. interests, explain why he has dispatched some 150,000 U.S. troops to the Gulf, insist that he does not want war, but assert that Baghdad is running out of time to disarm. Reportedly, the president will leave it to Secretary of State Colin Powell to build the U.S. case that Iraq has ties to bin Laden’s network.
“The information that we can divulge in greater detail, we will be divulging in the days ahead,” Powell told reporters yesterday.
Iraq has no links to al-Qaida, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri at a press conference yesterday following remarks by Powell and Fleischer.