Iran might want U.S. help against al Qaeda: expert

[donsu]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070301/ts_nm/iran_usa_qaeda_dc_1


Iran could be interested in cooperating with the United States to combat al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, a leading U.S. expert on Afghanistan said on Thursday.

Barnett Rubin, one-time adviser to former U.N. special representative to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi, said Iranian officials have told him privately that al Qaeda poses a new threat to Afghanistan that could have implications for Iran's national security.

"They believe that al Qaeda is the number one threat to Iran, maybe after the United States," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Iran's ruling Muslim clerics are Shi'ite, an Islamic sect opposed by the Sunni-dominated al Qaeda and Taliban.

"They told me they had some information about it, and they would like to cooperate with the United States. But neither their government in Tehran, nor our government in Washington, had authorized the sharing of that information, which they found frustrating," Rubin added.

The committee's top Democratic and Republican senators said they would urge the State Department to consider Rubin's remarks ahead of two conferences with Iran and Syria set to begin next week in Baghdad.
-snip-
-----------------------------

my brain doesn't want to comprehend the above

I keep rereading the above and saying 'hunh?'

[Kagemusha]

1. The US has never accepted Iranian "help" with Al Qaeda

because Iran is considered by the administration to be a greater foe than Al Qaeda, so why help it?

[donsu]

2. Iran didn't damage us so why is it the greater foe?

nt

[Kagemusha]

3. Bigger threat to Israel for one thing.

To give the bluntest, shortest answer possible.

[sce56]

4. The US trained Funded and Supported Al Qaeda! They probably still work for the CIA!

al-CIA-duh!
al-Qaeda: background on the boogeyman
CIA, Pakistani and Saudi connections



The Power of Nightmares

BBC

Part I: Baby It's Cold Outside http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

Part II: The Phantom Victory http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3951615.stm

Part III: The Shadows in the Cave http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3970901.stm

www.politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html
The making of the terror myth
Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the 'inevitability' of catastrophic terrorist attack. But has the danger been exaggerated? A major new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion. Andy Beckett reports Friday October 15, 2004 The Guardian

Thom Hartmann 'The Power of Nightmares': Hyping Terror For Fun, Profit - And Power www.commondreams.org/views04/1207-26.htm

www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml/The_Power_of_Nightmares

available for free viewing at www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.
The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.
In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.
It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media.
At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists.
Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world.





“Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are on the defensive -- on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They're doing so on almost every continent populated by man -- in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America ... freedom fighters.”
- President Ronald Reagan, March 8, 1985
www.conspiracyarchive.com/Archive/CIA_Created_Osama.htm

[donsu]

5. true - that's why my brain balked at the article

nt

[Dhalgren]

6. Iran needs US help with al-Quaeda? Why, is Iran going to stop looking for them, too?