Ranger from the North

Stephen F. Hayes takes a look at Team Kerry foreign policy adviser Susan Rice's disturbing answer to a question regarding terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi who is now operating in Iraq. Here is what Rice had to say,

Our position is that he poses a major threat now in Iraq, a threat that frankly wasn't there before the U.S. invasion. But now we have got to go after him and capture him or kill him. Before the invasion, he was in non-Saddam controlled area, very minor, and didn't pose any imminent threat to the U.S., and was not in any way cooperating with al-Qaeda.

To which Mr. Hayes responds,

She's right about two things: (1) that Zarqawi "poses a major threat now in Iraq;" and (2) "we have got to go after him and capture or kill him."

Everything else is wrong.

Mr. Hayes goes on to point out the evidence that contradicts Rice's view on Zarqawi. Here's an example cited by Mr. Hayes from a State Department report,

The presence of several hundred al-Qaida operatives fighting with the small Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam in the northeastern corner of Iraqi Kurdistan--where the IIS operates--is well documented. Iraq has an agent in the most senior levels of Ansar al-Islam as well. In addition, small numbers of highly placed al-Qaida militants were present in Baghdad and areas of Iraq that Saddam controls. It is inconceivable these groups were in Iraq without the knowledge and acquiescence of Saddam's regime. In the past year, al-Qaida operatives in northern Iraq concocted suspect chemicals under the direction of senior al-Qaida associate Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi and tried to smuggle them into Russia, Western Europe, and the United States for terrorist operations.

Mr. Hayes then asks,

The question remains then: Why would Susan Rice say these things? Is it possible that the senior foreign policy adviser to John Kerry simply doesn't know much about Zarqawi, the leading terrorist in Iraq today? Or is it possible that she knows all of this and chooses to deny it in a crass political effort to separate the Iraq war from the broader war on terror?

Either one of those explanations is scary. Susan Rice's comments further reveal Team Kerry's fundamental misunderstanding about the enemy we face in the Global War on Terror. So, is it their position that Zarqawi was a peaceful, productive citizen prior to the invasion of Iraq? I'm just wondering because Rice claimed that he wasn't a threat, at least not until the aggressive Americans arrived and drove him to his hated of Israel and the West.

Do they think that bin Laden is the only one interested in carrying out attacks against Americans both in the United States and abroad? They just don't get it.

More information on Zarqawi can be found at GlobalSecurity.org here. Here's some advice for Susan Rice: Read it.