Posted on 02/09/2003 6:35:38 PM PST by WestCoastGal
IJAZ: Exactly. But there is another more important and more dangerous thing that is at hand. In my judgment, tomorrow Secretary Powell is going to go in front of the United Nations and make a case.
The case that he makes forensically is fairly clear now, that is that he is going to bring in intercepts and he's going to show exactly what it is we know the Iraqis have been moving around to violate the spirit and the letter of 1441. But what he may not be able as to easily talk about is the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, because that is not as much of a forensic connection.
HUME: In other words, that is not the kind of thing revealed in intercepts and photographs?
IJAZ: Exactly right. Because now al Qaeda has reduced itself to carrying all if its messages and all the most dangerous things that it does by hand carriage, if you will, by hand messengers.
Now, that is where we come back to what President Bush said in October of last year when he identified a senior al Qaeda leader who had gone to Iraq, received medical treatment to have a leg amputated that was blown up in the Afghan bombing campaign and then proceeded to a northern Iraqi terrorist outfit. What we have not yet heard and this is what my sources are telling me over the past two or three days, is that that leader was in fact, transported through southern Turkey using Albanian mercenaries to transport him into...
HUME: What is his name, by the way?
IJAZ: Abu Masab al-Zawkawi. He was transported through southern Turkey into the Balkans and then ended up in Paris sometime just before Ramadan started...
HUME: Last fall?
IJAZ: ... in 2002, last fall.
Now, the thing that is the most important about this is that when they uncovered the cells in Paris two weeks ago, in the apartment where they uncovered those cells, they found traces of ricin. And those traces of ricin are linked directly to this man Zawkawi.
HUME: These are al Qaeda cells?
Good point! I hope so, too.
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