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| Home Front: Politix |
| Rice on Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda |
| 2004-09-11 |
| The US administration restated its case on Friday that Iraq had strong links to al-Qaeda following Vice-President Dick Cheney's latest statement that Saddam Hussein's regime had given sanctuary to Osama bin Laden's group. The administration has persisted in saying that there were close links between Iraq and al-Qaeda even though the official investigation into the September 11, 2001 attacks said in its final report that there was "no collaborative operational relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda". "You don't have to have a collaborative operational control in order to aid terrorists," US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told NBC television when questioned about Cheney's remarks. She said that it was a publicly known that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who Rice described as "the face of terror in Iraq today" had "operated freely in Baghdad" and probably ordered the assassination of a US government aid advisor in Jordan last year. "We know that there have been long-standing ties and long-standing contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq. But of course, the way that Saddam Hussein was most dangerous was that he was a completely destabilising force in the Middle East." Rice is a specialist on Russia and when asked about the Beslan school tragedy, she said: "This was just a horrible event and it was one of the most brutal and barbaric events that we have ever seen. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |