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April 28, 2004
Al Qaeda Chem-Bomb Plotter Confesses Iraqi Training
This is huge:
At least one of the al Qaida plotters arrested in Jordan earlier this month as part of a weapons of mass destruction plot that Jordanian officials say could have killed 80,000 people revealed on Monday that he was trained in Iraq before the U.S. invaded in March 2003.
In a confession broadcast on Jordanian television, the unnamed WMD conspirator revealed, "In Iraq, I started training in explosives and poisons. I gave my complete obedience to [Abu Musab al] Zarqawi," the al Qaeda WMD specialist whose base of operations was in Iraq.
Excerpts from the WMD conspirator's confession broadcast by ABC's "Nightline" late Monday show that the WMD plot was planned and trained for in Iraq more than a year before the U.S. invasion.
"After the fall of Afghanistan," the WMD plotter said, "I met Zarqawi again in Iraq." U.S. forces vanquished the Taliban government in Kabul in Dec. 2001 - 15 months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"Some of the details appear to be fairly significant in terms of the planning," reported "Nightline's" Chris Bury. "$170,000, a lot of meetings, getting instructions from people in Iraq, people inside Syria."
"This doesn't appear to be a mom and pop operation," he added.
Let us mention the necessary caveats: The pro-war right has prematurely claimed vindication on stories that didn't pan out. Remember those "secret Iraqi documents" claiming a direct meeting between Saddam and bin Ladin?
And sure, anyone being interrorgated -- especially in a non-Western country -- can be induced to confess to anything, given enough... incentives.
Still: if this checks out, this absolutely vindicates the pro-war right, and rubbishes the constant bleating of "no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda" of the anti-war, pro-appeasement left.