Another Bush talking point goes down in flames
posted by
Clyde
5:37 AM
Expert: Al-Qaida can't conquer Iraq
A leading U.S. expert says al-Qaida would not be able to take over Iraq if the U.S. military left the country.
"It is highly improbable that al-Qaida could use Iraq as the kind of safe haven it enjoyed in Afghanistan," Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president in charge of foreign policy and defense studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, said in a recently released memo.
The terrorist organization would not enjoy the same kind of protection and freedom as it did in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime because it is not embraced by most Iraqis, Carpenter wrote.
"Al-Qaida also had a much larger force in Afghanistan -- an estimated 18,000 fighters. Even the U.S. government concedes that there are fewer than 2,000 al-Qaida fighters in Iraq, and the Iraq Study Group put the figure at only 1,300," Carpenter wrote. "It strains credulity to imagine 1,300 fighters -- and foreigners at that -- taking over and controlling a country of 26 million people."
(link)
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