I know I’ve mentioned this before, but every time I see reports like this one…
Kidnappings? Zarqawi. Church bombings? Zarqawi. Beheadings? Zarqawi. Truck bombs that slaughter Iraqi civilians by the dozen? Zarqawi.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is behind a small percentage of the bombings and terrorist attacks in Iraq. But his have been the bloodiest. This week has seen some of the worst: On Sunday, an orchestrated series of bombings and shellings rocked the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad and killed 37 across the country. On Tuesday, a crowd at a police recruiting station was ripped apart by a suicide car bomb, killing 59.
All this has made Zarqawi the face of jihad in Iraq and the most-wanted terrorist after Osama bin Laden.
…I feel compelled to mention that the Bush White House could have killed this terrorist and struck against his operation, but decided against it for political purposes.
NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.
In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.
In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.
The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.
Three times the Defense Department was prepared to strike at Zarqawi and three times the White House said no because they couldn’t be distracted from Iraq — the country that didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, wasn’t involved with 9/11, and didn’t represent an immediate threat to the United States. And now it’s Zarqawi who is causing murder and mayhem in Iraq.
It’s all about priorities — and Bush’s were wrong.
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.