Well, that article makes a case for there being ties between al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam, but I haven't seen the proof of ties between Ansar and al Qaeda besides the self-interested declarations of Kurdish leadership who want our help in keeping Ansar under control. For instance, I'm not sure I'm going to take the word of the author of that article because he's now hawking a forthcoming book called "Al Qaeda's Affiliates: the Next Generation of Terror." If there weren't so many affiliates, there wouldn't be much demand for the book, I would think.
But it's quite possible that my information is not complete. Even then, I'm not sure I see the reasoning behind focusing our military might and diplomatic muscle behind deposing a leader with arguably tenuous ties to al Qaeda while the leader of al Qaeda and the mastermind of 9/11 remains at large.
And get your minds out of the gutter with my use of "deposing," this is not the FB.
Of course, the earlier article you cited may be correct and we've already got OBL surrounded, in which case I say "huzzah" through the egg on my face. Incidentally, when I googled "Osama surrounded" this was the first non-blog site I came up with:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/12/13/gen...gainst.terror/
[edited to fix link]
