Terrorist Training Ground

Iraq training ground for al-Qaeda: Labor
November 20, 2005
Copyright © 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald.

"Iraq has become a training ground for al-Qaeda and Australia's involvement in the country has done nothing to reduce the overall terrorism threat, Labor says. Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd has just returned from a visit to the Middle East, where he says he learnt first hand of just how powerful al-Qaeda had become in Iraq. "What we are seeing now is Iraq becoming a platform, a training platform, for the spread of al-Qaeda across the wider Middle East, "Mr Rudd told ABC television."The large-scale foreign troop presence, including our own, acts, in fact, as a magnet for terrorist organisations to not just go there but to become better trained there for deployment to worldwide jihad, including our part of the world. "Remember, the stated policy objective in the first place is that we needed to invade Iraq in order to reduce the global terrorist threat?" It's had exactly the reverse effect and we now have Iraq becoming this training ground for terrorists, not just deployment to the wider Middle East but also conceivably to South-East Asia as well.""