Al-Qaeda & Iraq?

[barton]

In today’s NYT, William Safire has an unusual column, which reads more like a news brief at first:

Opinion | Saddam's Offensive (Published 2002)

He claims there are Laden-trained assassins in northern Iraq, going after Kurdish leaders. There is a reference to the New Yorker breaking the story before him, but I don’t subscribe to it. Anyone know anything else about this?

My first impression was that he’s getting his leg pulled by Kurds overeager for U.S. assistance. Why would Hussein use al-Queda operatives for dirty work instead of his own security forces, when the U.S. is looking for any middling excuse to invade?

[december]

I have no info confirming or denying Safire’s column, but here’s a column alleging that Saddam and Arafat are teaming up to plot attacks. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/04/07/wmid07.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/04/07/ixnewstop.html

Senior officials of Saddam’s General Intelligence Agency (GIA) are reported to have held talks with Mr Arafat’s Palestinian Authority to identify potential targets, according to Western intelligence experts.

They have been passed details of a meeting in Baghdad at the end of last month when an Arafat aide is said to have provided a list of strategic sites in Israel and Saudi Arabia that might be attacked in the event of American air strikes on Baghdad. The list of possible targets was presented to officials at the GIA, which is controlled by Uday Hussein, Saddam’s eldest son.

Apart from agreeing to share intelligence, the Palestinians are said to have provided Iraqi security agents with 37 blank passports, obtained from a variety of Arab countries, that might be used by the Iraqis when mounting terrorist attacks.