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Bush warns that al-Qaida threat persists, sees link with al-Qaida in Iraq


CHARLESTON, S.C. -- President Bush, trying to justify the Iraq war, cited intelligence reports Tuesday he said showed a link between al-Qaida's operation in Iraq and the terror group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Democrats dismissed Bush's argument.
"The merger between al-Qaida and its Iraqi affiliate is an alliance of killers and that is why the finest military in the world is on their trail," Bush said at Charleston Air Force Base, a launching point for cargo and military personnel headed to Iraq.
Citing security details he declassified for his speech, Bush described al-Qaida's burgeoning operation in Iraq as a direct threat to the United States. Bush accused critics in Congress of misleading the American public by suggesting otherwise.
"That's like watching a man walk into a bank with a mask and a gun and saying, 'He's probably just there to cash a check,"' Bush told troops at Charleston Air Force Base.
Bush is up against highly skeptical audiences with 18 months left in office. The public has largely lost faith in the war, Congress is weighing ways to end it, and international partners have fading memories of the 2001 attacks against the U.S. Six years later, terrorist leader Osama bin Laden remains at large.
"The president's claim that the war in Iraq is protecting us from al-Qaida is as misguided and dangerous as the conclusions that drove us to Iraq in the first place," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "The fact is that our continued flawed strategy in Iraq is emboldening and unifying al-Qaida, both in that country and elsewhere."
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said Bush "is trying to scare the American people into believing that al-Qaida is the rationale for continuing the war in Iraq." But Kerry said Bush presented no new evidence to back that up, and added: "The president is picking the wrong rationale for this war. Al-Qaida is not the principal killer of American forces in Iraq."
In broad strokes, Bush linked the Iraq war to an event that Americans remember deeply -- the Sept. 11 attacks, not the sectarian strife among Iraqis, which has caused some to question U.S. military involvement.
Al-Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden, orchestrated the terrorist strikes on the United States by turning hijacked airplanes into killing machines. Now a fresh intelligence estimate warns that the United States is in a heightened threat environment, mainly from al-Qaida. The terror group is seizing upon its affiliate, al-Qaida in Iraq, to recruit members and organize attacks, the report found.
"I've presented intelligence that clearly establishes this connection," Bush said after spelling out details of foreign ties and leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Al-Qaida had no active cells in Iraq when the U.S. invaded in March 2003, and its operation there is much larger now than before the war, U.S. intelligence officers say. The war itself has turned into a valuable recruiting tool for al-Qaida, senior intelligence officials concede. Bush denied that the war triggered al-Qaida's operations in Iraq.
Bush cited intelligence that:
--Al-Qaida in Iraq was founded not by an Iraqi but by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had deep relations with al-Qaida leaders. The president said Zarqawi, who was killed by U.S. forces last year, set up operations with terrorist associates in Iraq long before U.S.-led forces arrived, and that in the violence and instability following Saddam Hussein's fall, was able to expand the "size, scope and lethality" of his operation. Zarqawi formally joined al-Qaida in 2004 and pledged allegiance to bin Laden, he said.
--The merger gave al-Qaida senior leadership "a foothold in Iraq to extend its geographic presence and to plot external operations and to tout the centrality of the jihad in Iraq to solicit direct monetary support elsewhere."

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/national/BO58316/

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