Next Stop, Kurdistan?
Now Colin Powell has me really confused.
If the most direct link to al Qaida can be found in Kurd-controlled areas outside Saddam's control—and a poison making outfit at that—why can't the US simply roll in from Turkey and take care of that little issue? Or maybe I'm misreading something about Powell's Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi tale:
Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
…Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered Al Qaida safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaida from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain their today.
So a single "Baghdad agent" mandates the invasion and occupation of the entire country? Why can't we try the easy way first? Like I said, I don't get it.