Cheney asserts Iraq-al Qaeda link ~ on radio show: "They were present before we invaded Iraq."

BBC ^ | Friday, 6 April 2007, 16:11 GMT 17:11 UK | BBC Staff

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Cheney asserts Iraq-al Qaeda link

Dick Cheney said al-Qaeda was working in Iraq before the 2003 war

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has repeated his assertion that the al-Qaeda network had links with Iraq before the US-led invasion of 2003.

Mr Cheney told a US radio show: "They were present before we invaded Iraq."

Hours earlier, a declassified Pentagon report said information obtained from Iraq's former leader Saddam Hussein had confirmed they had no strong ties.

Its publication followed pressure from Democrats who suggest intelligence was twisted in the run-up to the war.

The belief that Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda were working together was an important element in the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq.

Critics have since suggested the administration "cherry-picked" from available intelligence to bolster that case.

'Inappropriate' intelligence

Mr Cheney, in an interview with conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, insisted there had been a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al-Qaeda terror group.

He said former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been leading the network's operations in the country before the 2003 US-led invasion.

The US still does not know where al-Qaeda head Osama bin Laden is

"He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organised the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," he told the show.

The newly declassified Pentagon report was based on interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two of his aides, as well as documents seized in Iraq.

The Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, had pushed for its full release after it was released in summary form in February.

In a statement on Thursday, he said the document showed why a defence department investigation had concluded that some Pentagon pre-war intelligence work had been "inappropriate".

The report into former Pentagon policy chief Douglas Feith's handling of intelligence on Iraq was prepared by the defence department's top watchdog, Inspector General Thomas Gimble.

Under repeated questioning by Mr Levin in February, Mr Gimble said the conclusions reached in reports by Mr Feith were not fully supported by the available intelligence.

In particular, his conclusion there was a "mature and symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda could not be justified on the basis of the available intelligence.

In addition, an alleged meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and a leader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, never took place.

Mr Feith's supporters stress that the inspector general found no evidence of illegal or unauthorised activity.

[Peach]

I love him too, Ernest. It’s really unfortunate that he won’t run for the president but given how our Republican Congressmen let the left demonize the man, he probably couldn’t win anyway.

[Matchett-PI]

Saddam’s Terrorist Ties
The American Thinker ^
Posted on 01/07/2006 6:10:29 PM EST by april15Bendovr
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1553808/posts

The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes has been trying for a significant amount of time to get released publicly the captured Iraqi documents (only 2.5 % of which have as yet been translated).

He advises that some are about to be released. And they should put an end to the preposterous claims that the Baathists would never work with the Jihadis.

Here is what the soon to be released documents reveal, Hayes says:

The secret training took place primarily at three camps-in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak-and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria’s GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.

The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million “exploitable items” captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq war.

“As much as we overestimated WMD, it appears we underestimated [Saddam Hussein’s] support for transregional terrorists,” says one intelligence official.

Speaking of Ansar al Islam, the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that operated in northern Iraq, the former high-ranking military intelligence officer says: “There is no question about the fact that AI had reach into Baghdad. There was an intelligence connection between that group and the regime, a financial connection between that group and the regime, and there was an equipment connection. It may have been the case that the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] support for AI was meant to operate against the [anti-Saddam] Kurds. But there is no question IIS was supporting AI.”

The official continued:

”[Saddam] used these groups because he was interested in extending his influence and extending the influence of Iraq. There are definite and absolute ties to terrorism. The evidence is there, especially at the network level. How high up in the government was it sanctioned? I can’t tell you. I don’t know whether it was run by Qusay [Hussein] or [Izzat Ibrahim] al-Duri or someone else. I’m just not sure. But to say Iraq wasn’t involved in terrorism is flat wrong.”

Hayes details the great difficulty in getting all this documentation translated and released, and all of us share his frustration. And I wonder if when this batch is released the media will not cherry pick it and underplay the evidence of the links between Saddam’s Iraq and terrorism.

But slow translation of captured , valuable war documents is nothing new. In the 1980’s until the Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations started work on them,many captured Nazi documents remained untranslated and virtually unusable for research.

And you thought the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark was fiction

Clarice Feldman 1 07 06

*
Attorney General Gonzales Must Investigate

An open letter from Clarice Feldman @ The American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=4109

1-6-2006
Dear Mr. Attorney General:

Twice in recent days we have seen published evidence of unethical conduct warranting disciplinary action on the part of FISA judges. Since they have hidden their conduct under a cloak of anonymity, the normal process of filing complaints with the Clerk of the FISA Court is unavailing. Therefore, I ask that you immediately institute an investigation to find out which judges are involved and seek appropriate measures to remove or discipline the judges involved.

Let’s review that evidence briefly:

In his December 16, 2005 article in the New York Times, James Risen says:

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters.

This suggests that a judge on the FISA court was one of Risen’s sources. If there is any ambiguity, this article in Thursday’s Washington Post, [assuming the newspaper and its reporter have not perpetrated a hoax] establishes beyond peradventure of doubt that some judges on the Court did speak anonymously and in violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct and basic precepts of appropriate judicial conduct to that reporter:

Some judges who spoke on the condition of anonymity yesterday said they want to know whether warrants they signed were tainted by the NSA program. Depending on the answers, the judges said they could demand some proof that wiretap applications were not improperly obtained. Defense attorneys could have a valid argument to suppress evidence against their clients, some judges said, if information about them was gained through warrantless eavesdropping that was not revealed to the defense.

As Andrew McCarthy of the National Review reminds us this is shocking conduct:

First of all, judges speaking to the press regarding matters that may end up in litigation is always a major impropriety, regardless of what kind of matters are involved. Canon 3 of the federal Code of Judicial Conduct expressly admonishes: “A judge should avoid public comment on the merits of a pending or impending action, requiring similar restraint by court personnel subject to the judge’s direction and control.” This is so elementary to fairness and impartiality ­ the hallmarks of the judicial function ­ that it is almost surprising to find a rule about it.
But let’s leave that aside for a second. These are the judges of the FISA court. Of the hundreds of federal judges in the United States, there are, as already noted, less than a dozen specially chosen for these weighty responsibilities. They are selected largely because they are thought to be of unquestionable rectitude, particularly when it comes to things like leaking to the press.
To find federal FISA court judges leaking to the Washington Post about an upcoming closed meeting with administration officials about the highest classified matters of national security in the middle of a war is simply shocking.

Even more mind-blowing, though, is to find them discussing what they see as the merits of the issue. Without having heard any facts or taken any submissions on the governing law ­ and in the cowardice of anonymity ­ here they are speculating for the media about what positions they might take depending on how the administration answers their questions. Here they are preliminarily weighing in on the validity of defense claims in cases where FISA evidence was introduced. This is an inexplicable judicial misconduct.

He’s right. I urge you to act promptly and put the reporters and FISA Judges under oath, to get to the bottom of this apparent flagrant abuse of office.

Clarice Feldman 1 06 06
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1553808/posts?page=9#9

[marron]

There is a real untold story in all this which presumably involves ass-covering and turf-protecting on a grand scale at CIA.

Maybe. I call it a mutiny.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

It never happened, because they can't confirm it, and they can't confirm it because they didn't have anyone on the scene.

Well said.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just in case you haven't seen the Washington Post's spin:

Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted
The Washington Post ^ | April 6, 2007 | R. Jeffrey Smith

[jude24]

If Cheney’s statements had any merit, he they would have come from the existing White House infrastructure and be widely disseminated. They would not be released as red meat to the Dittoheads waiting for Rush Limbaugh to tell them what to think.

[JerseyDvl]

What a post! Thanks for the plethora of useful facts.

[marron]

The entire approach is fundamentally intellectually dishonest and impossible to take seriously anymore.

This whole post #15 is worth re-reading and is in part (along with some really good collections of links in other posts) why I am bookmarking this thread.

The last few years have been like a post-graduate course in propaganda, every possible propaganda technique has been pulled out of the toolkit and is right out there for us to see. Honest reporting is a rarity, most articles are as ripe for de-coding as anything written by Fisk.

You are right in noting how a long line of contacts between Saddam's intelligence circles and Bin Ladin's people can be simply defined out of existence. There were no "strong" contacts. There was no "operational" relationship. What does any of that mean? It means whatever you wish it to mean. Prove a long line of contacts, and unless you have the minutes of the meetings, they were just drinking tea as far as anyone knows.

This ignores the obvious fact that "espionage" is intended to be secret, below the radar, deniable. There isn't supposed to be a lot of public documentation of these contacts. Any contacts you can find will be by definition the tip of the iceberg. When you find hundreds of documents and hundreds of contacts in what is primarily an espionage relationship, you have to recognize that its a very big iceberg.

Something that has almost completely dropped down the memory hole, but which I remember, were the stockpiles of nerve agent found at several ammo dumps during the invasion. This occurred at least 3 times that I remember. In each case, there was some excitement from the reporters involved that they had found WMD. In each case after a day or two it would be reported that, no, it was just agricultural pesticide.

There was a process plant discovered that produced nerve agent. The plant manager was a military general, the place was fenced off and surrounded by guard towers, with infantry for security.

Again, after a couple of days, it was announced that no, it was just an agricultural pesticide plant.

I remember this every time anyone argues that we never found WMD in Iraq. The difference between pesticide and nerve agent is only in its application. Spread it on your fields, diluted, and its pesticide. Spread it on Iranian troops, concentrated, its nerve agent. The Iraqis used to call it bug poison, for a reason. It is.

So stockpiles of WMD have been defined out of existence.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Messed up the link...second try:

Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted

[Tinian]

Bookmark

[Txsleuth]

I just saw this thread..

I saw Charlie Rangel on Fox today...and it seems the dems have come up with a “new” take on Iraq.

Of course he went on and on about how there were NO WMD’s in Iraq before we invaded..and that al-queda “who is our REAL enemy” were NOT in Iraq, before we invaded.

But, then, he said “and we also know that SADDAM was on Bin Ladin and al-queda’s HIT LIST”...

THAT is news to me...I don’t remember a hit list with Saddam on it from Bin Ladin, do you??

[RVN Airplane Driver]

Anyone with half a brain could figure this out....but of course that is a tall order for the dumbcrats....to use their brains for anything but hatred.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

THAT is news to me...I don’t remember a hit list with Saddam on it from Bin Ladin, do you??

Another madeup fictional statement as far as I am concerned....

[gov_bean_ counter]

think this explains a lot and is not just a recent method of operating...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1812810/posts?page=2#2

[Txsleuth]

Thanks....I didn’t know if I was just not remembering or what.

[SierraWasp]

"Cheney gives me a warm fuzzy feeling....love the guy!"

That's because the guy's a seriously conservative government official who actually has GRAVITAS!!!

[SunkenCiv]

thanks E.

He said former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been leading the network's operations in the country before the 2003 US-led invasion... "He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organised the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," he told the show.

[PaRepub07]

Sen. Levin, was a member of the Senate Select Committe from I believe 1998 to 2006.

Also, John Kerry and Bob Graham were also on the 1998 to 2000 intel committee.

These were the years that Al Qaeda began arriving in the U.S. to attack us. Levin and Kerry were responsible for overseeing the intel community.

The responsibility rested with them, and they failed. That is why they resist any connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.

Not to mention these were Clinton years.

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

"In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."

--

US GRAND JURY INDICTMENT AGAINST USAMA BIN LADEN (11/06/98>

[Marine_Uncle]

I’m with ya on that. Besides so much stuff we now have archived verify Dick is not inventing this stuff. Saddams goons where up to their eyeballs in supporting terrorism in many forms. Period.