A reminder about Zarqawi...before the invasion [View All]

[teach1st]

Has this story ever been discredited?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/

Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind
By Jim Miklaszewski
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:14 p.m. ET March 2, 2004

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

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The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

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