Teribis:

Only trouble with that arguement is that Ansar al-Islam's camp was NOT in the Northern "No-Fly" Zone. The campe lies south-east of it and is conveniently close to the Iranian border to let those who have to skip across to avoid any unpleasantness.

Without sources, it's a bit hard to evaluate Teribus's claims.

There is: this, and this, for example, in support of Teribus's contentions.

But there's this and this to the contrary.

But it's pretty uch menaingless quibbling. The "no-fly zone" was meant to protect Kurdish areas in the North from Saddam, and for that it worked pretty well, allowing the establishment of independent Kurdish zones of control there (one under the KDP and one under the rival PUK), and all accounts above agree that the Ansar al-Islam camps in and around Halabja were within the PUK controlled area. And as one commenter on the firts link above noted, it was in part the "no-fly" zones that enabled the Kurdish enclaves.

Which, of course, is what matters here; Ansar wasn't in an area under Saddam's control. Sorry if I used an inaccurate shorthand for the northern zones under Kurdish control (assuming that in fact the "no-fly zone was set rigidly at the 36th parallel, something that's also not quite obvious; the U.S. repeatedly flew into areas below it, and challenged any aircraft at all if they even looked cross-eyed at the U.S... or had the temerity to fly, period).

Cheers,