Did Bush's Anti-Iraq Plotting Make US Vulnerable to Terrorists?

[/ dave /]

Charles Jannuzi wrote:

> Iraqi rebels blast State Department
> 
> By Eli J. Lake
> UPI State Department Correspondent
> Published 1/7/2002 7:11 PM
> 
> WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- An Iraqi rebel group denied funding by the State
> Department last week because of concerns about financial
> irregularities lashed out Monday, accusing officials of trying to undermine
> the Bush administration's Iraq policy.
> 
> The Iraqi National Congress "believes that preemptive efforts by the Near
> East Bureau of the Department of State to discredit the INC serve
> no purpose other than to undermine the U.S. president's declared policy of
> regime change in Iraq," INC spokesman Sharif Ali Bin Al Hussein said in a
> statement from London Monday.

That's all changed. When I read the above posting, I remembered hearing
a story on the BBC that the funding had been recently restored. In the
report, the BBC interviewer took the INC spokesperson to task rather
vociferously, basically saying they hadn't accomplished a damn thing
vis-a-vis ousting Saddam, and what could now justify the resumption of
funding. The INC person didn't really come up with much in the way of
explanation, except for some broad pronouncements about the importance
of his organization in the context of the endeavor. Here's an excerpt of
an article from the BBC site with the same story:

US restores Iraqi opposition funds
Thursday, 31 January, 2002, 02:24 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1792000/1792874.stm

The United States has agreed to restore funding to one of the main Iraqi
opposition groups, the Iraqi National Congress. 

The US had suspended its funding earlier this month because it said the
organisation had failed to properly account for millions of dollars in
US aid it had received. 

Funding has now been resumed at previous levels, US State Department
officials said following talks with INC representatives in Washington on
Wednesday. 

The BBC's John Leyne in Washington says the decision to resume INC
funding is likely to be seen as a victory for the hawks in the Bush administration.

(...)

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/  dave  /