Iraq cell reportedly told to plan attacks abroad, in U.S., president says

NEW LONDON, Conn. - President Bush, stressing that Americans face an ongoing threat from terrorists, shared intelligence on Wednesday asserting that Osama bin Laden was working in 2005 to set up a unit inside Iraq to hit U.S. targets.

Much of the information Bush cited in a commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy described terrorism plots already revealed, but he fleshed out details and highlighted U.S. successes in foiling planned attacks.

Bush said that intelligence showed that in January 2005, bin Laden tasked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his senior operative in Iraq, to set up the cell to use Iraq as a staging ground for attacks in the United States. Al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq in June 2006 by a U.S. airstrike.

This information expanded on a classified bulletin the Homeland Security Department issued in March 2005.

The bulletin, which warned that bin Laden had enlisted al-Zarqawi to plan potential strikes in the United States, was described at the time as credible but not specific. It did not prompt the administration to raise its national terror alert level.

Al-Zarqawi briefed in 2005
Bush, who is battling Democrats in Congress over spending for the unpopular war in Iraq, also said that in the spring of 2005, bin Laden instructed Hamza Rabia, a senior operative, to brief al-Zarqawi on an al-Qaida plan to attack sites outside Iraq.

Around the same time, Abu Fajah al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida manager, suggested that bin Laden send Rabia to Iraq to help al-Zarqawi plan the external operations, he said. It is unclear whether Rabia went to Iraq.

Bush said that another suspected al-Qaida operative, Ali Salih al-Mari, was trained in Afghanistan and dispatched to the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

"Our intelligence community believes Ali Salih was training in poisoning at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan and had been sent to the United States before 9-11 to serve as a sleeper agent ready for follow-on attacks," Bush said.

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