IRAQI TERROR KINGPIN FOUND?

One of the things that has made the guerilla attacks in Iraq so damn scary is that the peo­ple behind them has been a mys­tery. There’s no Osama, no Arafat to blame for the car­nage.
Now, CNN claims to have found a mas­ter­mind: General Izzat Ibrahim al-​​Duri, the north­ern regional com­man­der in Saddam’s mil­i­tary.
“Al-​​Duri, the ‘King of Clubs’ in the U.S. military’s ‘most wanted’ deck of cards, is the highest-​​ranking mem­ber of the Saddam Hussein regime still at large, except for Saddam him­self,” CNN notes.
The net­work says “Pentagon offi­cials” — rely­ing on con­fes­sions by freshly-​​captured mem­bers of the Ansar Al-​​Islam ter­ror group — have fin­gered Al-​​Duri as the king­pin.
It’s a big break­through, if true. But, as with all “first reports,” take this one with a grain of salt…
THERE’S MORE: “Senior American offi­cials” now say there’s evi­dence that Saddam may be behind the insur­gency.
Of course, this “role by Mr. Hussein could not be cor­rob­o­rated, and one senior offi­cial cau­tioned that recent intel­li­gence reports con­tained con­flict­ing assess­ments,” accord­ing to the Times.
Hmm… Front page claims, backed by hazy intel­li­gence… This all sounds so famil­iar, some­how…
AND MORE: “Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Friday that he saw no signs that Saddam Hussein was active in coor­di­nat­ing attacks on American forces in Iraq,” Reuters reports.

“I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing, but we really don’t have the evi­dence to put together a claim that he is pulling all the strings among these rem­nants in Baghdad and other parts of the coun­try that are caus­ing us the dif­fi­culty,” Mr. Powell said on the ABC News pro­gram “Nightline,” accord­ing to a tran­script.
He also cast doubt on reports that one of Mr. Hussein’s deputies, Izzat Ibrahim, was behind the attacks, say­ing, “I see no evi­dence to sup­port that.” 

October 30th, 2003 | War Update | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.