"Where do you get the idea that al Qaeda were already in Iraq at Saddam's request? That was Bush propaganda (along with WMD's) that he used as a reason to invade Iraq. Since then, we now know that al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion." - GUEST,dianavan - 03 Jun 07 - 08:11 PM.

I take it dianavan that you have not heard of this character before then:

Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, commonly known in the western media as Mullah Krekar, born July 7, 1956. He is an Iraqi Kurd who came to Norway as a refugee from northern Iraq in 1991. His wife and four children have Norwegian citizenship, but not Krekar himself. He speaks Kurdish, Arabic, Norwegian and English.

Krekar was the original leader of the Islamist armed group Ansar al-Islam, which was set up and commenced operations in Iraqi Kurdistan while he had refugee status in Norway. Krekar claims, however, not to have had foreknowledge of the various terrorist attacks performed by the group he was leading. Since February 2003 he has an expulsion order against him, which is suspended pending Iraqi government guarantees that he will not face torture or execution. (In Norway it is illegal to expel someone if he is in risk of death or torture).

Authorities in the Kurdish Regional Government in Northern Iraq have repeatedly asked for Ahmad ("Krekar") to be extradited from Norway. The death penalty remains on the books in the Kurdistan region. Most death sentences have been changed into life sentences since the Kurdish authorities took power in 1992, the exception being that eleven alleged members of Ansar al-Islam were hanged in the regional capital of Arbil in October 2006.

While Krekar has not been found guilty of anything, a number of his opinions have met little sympathy; he was once recorded claiming that Osama bin Laden is the "jewel in the crown of Islam", and that he was proud of what Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "has done and that he has become a martyr".

Ansar al-Islam was formed in December 2001 as a merger of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), led by Abu Abdallah al-Shafi'i, and a splinter group from the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan led by Mullah Krekar. Krekar became the leader of the merged Ansar al-Islam, which opposed an agreement made between IMK and the dominant Kurdish group in the area, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

Ansar al-Islam fortified a number of villages along the Iranian border, with Iranian artillery support. The local villagers were subjected to harsh sharia laws; musical instruments were destroyed and singing forbidden. The only school for girls in the area was destroyed, and all pictures of women removed from merchandise labels. Sufi shrines were desecrated and members of the Kakkai (a non-Muslim Kurdish religious group) were forced to convert to Islam or flee. (Please note dianavan while Mullah Krekar wants everybody else to live under Sharia Law, he does not seem to wish the same fate for his own family - must have learned that from Tosser Arafat)

Ansar al-Islam quickly initiated a number of attacks on the peshmerga (armed forces) of the PUK, on one occasion massacring 53 prisoners and beheading them. Several assassination attempts on leading PUK politicians were also made with car bombs and snipers.

Ansar al-Islam comprised about 300 armed men, many of these veterans from the Soviet-Afghan War (Now then dianavan, any chance that they were some of Osama Bin Laden's boys on the lam from Afghanistan??), and a proportion being neither Kurd nor Arab. Ansar al-Islam is alleged to be connected to al-Qaeda, and provided an entry point for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other Afghan veterans to enter Iraq.

According to the United States, they had established facilities for the production of poisons, including ricin. The U.S. also claimed that Ansar al-Islam had links with Saddam Hussein, thus claiming a link between Hussein and al-Qaeda. Mullah Krekar denied this claim, and declared his hostility to Saddam.

Many local Kurds believe Saddam was happy to see an armed opposition engaging the PUK. Scholarly consensus is, however, that no formal links existed, though Baathist intelligence probably had infiltrated the group.

OK dianavan take a good look at the dates, then tell me that such a group was nor present within the boundaries of Iraq prior to the invasion of March 2003. For any group of 300 men to enter a country and impose their rule of law over a certain area without the tacit approval and support of the regime in power is laughable. MGOH once tried to explain that they had set up shop in a Kurdish section of the country beyond the reach of Saddam, unfortunately geography was against that contention and the area was in a part of the country south of the boundary of the Northern No-Fly zone, i.e. firmly under the control of the Ba'athists in Baghdad.