Mimicking the hijackers who executed the Sept. 11 attacks, insurgents reportedly tied to al Qaeda in Iraq considered using student visas to slip terrorists into the United States to orchestrate a new attack on American soil.
At the time, Maples offered little additional insight into the possible terror plot. ABC News, however, has learned new details of what remains a classified incident that has been dealt with at the highest levels of government.
Sources tell ABC News that the plot may have involved moving between 10 and 20 suspects believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq into the United States with student visas — the same method used by the 19 al Qaeda terrorists who struck American targets on Sept. 11.
U.S. officials now require universities to closely track foreign nationals who use student visas to study in the United States. University officials must report international students who fail to arrive on campus or miss class regularly.
One terror plot avoided, but how many more are being planned?
al-Qaeda is in Iraq, it is a fact. People can argue and debate for years on whether they were there before we toppled Saddam, but the facts show that al-Qaeda members were at least recieving medical treatment in Iraq before we sent our troops there.
Does this mean that al-Qaeda was actively working out of Iraq....no one can say for sure one way or the other.
There are there now and breaking up a terror plot before they could send 10-20 al-Qaeda members here is better than turning on our televisions to see an attack all over our news on AMERICAN SOIL.
We also have Fox news reporting that the Iraqi Prime Minister has ceased protection for Anti-American Militia. This helps. If we can not go after the "bad guys" then we cannot win...period.
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's prime minister has dropped his protection of an anti-American cleric's Shiite militia after U.S. intelligence convinced him the group was infiltrated by death squads, two officials said Sunday.
[...]
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's turnaround on the Mahdi Army was puzzling because as late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia. It is held responsible for much of the sectarian bloodshed that has turned the capital into a battle zone over the past year.
Shiite militias began taking revenge after more than two years of incessant bomb and shooting attacks by Sunni insurgents.
Sometime between then and Nov. 30, when the prime minister met President Bush, al-Maliki was convinced of the truth of American intelligence reports which contended, among other things, that his protection of al-Sadr's militia was isolating him in the Arab world and among moderates at home, the two government officials said.
"Al-Maliki realized he couldn't keep defending the Mahdi Army because of the information and evidence that the armed group was taking part in the killings, displacing people and violating the state's sovereignty," said one official. Both he and a second government official who confirmed the account refused to be identified by name because the information was confidential. Both officials are intimately aware of the prime minister's thinking.
I really do not know what was said in the last video conference call between Bush and al-Maliki but I would have loved to be a fly on that wall, because all of a sudden al-Maliki has done a 180 and this is good news.
The Fourth Rail has an excellent article showing the Iraqi Army's strong points and successes and their shortcomings.
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