Posted on 11/17/2003 12:58:17 PM PST by PJ-Comix
On Fox News Sunday, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard challenged his journalistic colleagues to pick up a story in this week’s issue which recounts a lengthy Department of Defense assessment of 13 years of connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. But so far, the mainstream media are ignoring it.
The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes led his November 24 edition cover story, which was released on Saturday, plugged by the DrudgeReport.com and reported by FNC: “Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda -- perhaps even for Mohamed Atta -- according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.”
Barnes observed during the panel segment on Fox News Sunday: “I love the press's in particular selective use of intelligence, which they accuse the Bush administration of, the same people who will raise doubts about this intelligence are praising the CIA assessment of what's going on in Iraq right now.” That would be the CIA report saying that the situation is deteriorating rapidly.
But so far the media aren’t paying much attention to the Weekly Standard disclosure. None of the other broadcast network Sunday shows mentioned it and neither did the broadcast network evening newscasts on Sunday night.
And on Fox News Sunday, NPR’s Juan Williams ridiculed the Weekly Standard story while on Face the Nation, when Senator Ted Kennedy asserted that “the whole policy” toward Iraq “was based on the quicksand of false assumptions, that, one, that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which they weren't; secondly, that they were dominated by al-Qaeda, which they haven't been,” host Bob Schieffer failed to follow up by citing the Weekly Standard story. Instead, he summed up Kennedy’s claims for him: “Is what you're saying, Senator Kennedy, is that the administration decided it was going to war with Iraq and it didn't really care what the information was?”
(Schieffer mber 16 Fox News Sunday, Snow set up Barnes: “Fred, let me ask you about a series of memos that were first reported by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard which seemed to indicate that our intelligence agencies thought that there were some very strong connections, or at least some coincidences, that would link Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. Now, we haven't been able to get anybody to bite on this officially, but, looking at the memos, it does appear that the intelligence community thought there was pretty strong evidence that Saddam had been working with al Qaeda, and for a considerable period of time.”
Barnes: “Yes, and your first word was right, 'connections.’ They're not just coincidences. The interesting thing about this report, in particular, is the detail that it has of meetings between officials of Saddam Hussein's government and top officials of al Qaeda -- had met repeatedly over 13 years, from 1990 to 2003, met in many different places, and developed really an operational relationship of providing sanctuary for terrorists and training of terrorists in explosives and weapons of mass destruction and so on. Look, they say this is raw intelligence, but this is raw intelligence with great details, much of it coming from the CIA. You know, the -- I love the press's in particular selective use of intelligence, which they accuse the Bush administration of, the same people who will raise doubts about this intelligence are praising the CIA assessment of what's going on in Iraq right now. Look, there are repeated meetings that went on between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. It's clear that there was a strong connection.”
Williams: “Well, I don't know about a strong connection. The President himself has said we haven't proven anything.”
Brit Hume: “Whoa, whoa-”
Barnes: “He says we haven't proven-”
Hume: “9/11.”
Barnes: “-that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11.”
Williams: “Correct.”
Hume: “That's different.”
Williams: “And I don't think there's any proof that there's any -- that meetings may have occurred, but there's proof of any kind of connection that would say, here are funds, here are troops, here is effort to attack Americans, to create terror. We don't know that, Fred. But I think-”
Barnes: “You're setting up a strawman.”
Williams: “Well, no, but I think that's what this is. I think you're saying there's some connections here. I think there's a big difference-”
Barnes: “Some? Strong!”
Williams: “-between what the CIA memo that was released this week, the one that Bremer knew about, and that every White House official I know about says, yes, that's a legitimate memo, and this one, which is speculative.”
Barnes: “No, no. No, no.”
Williams: “But I think that there's a big argument here, because you're trying to make a case that somehow there's a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. I don't see it.”
Barnes: “Juan, you cannot call that report 'speculative.’ It is filled with details. It doesn't speculate at all. There is no speculation in there. And, Juan, I wonder, why would your reaction be to try to knock it down, rather than say, hey, there really was a strong connection between Saddam and al Qaeda?”
Williams: “I tell you what, because I think the American people realize that after 9/11 we had to do something about Afghanistan, we had to do something about al Qaeda. The whole issue about Iraq is separate, and you're trying to conflate them. Because what we did was, we took preemptive action against Iraq. Most people -- I think everyone sitting on this panel would say, OK, we did it, we're going to stand with this president. But you don't have to create this kind of, you know, all this cotton candy -- oh yeah, we knew there was a hard connection. It sounds a lot like what happened with Jessica Lynch. All of a sudden you realize this week, you know, Jessica Lynch was not what the Defense Department was building her up to be.”
Barnes: “Juan, these are hard facts. You can call it 'speculative,’ you can call it 'cotton candy.’ These are hard facts, and I'd like to see you refute any one of them.”
Williams: “Well, we'll see.”
Barnes: “There's a hard connection there.”
Williams: “I think the case is not to refute it. I think the case is to prove it, and it's yet to be proven.”
In the Weekly Standard, Hayes explained what is outlined in the memo he obtained. An excerpt:
The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.
According to the memo -- which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points -- Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.
The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War. According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in 1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions. According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."
The primary go-between throughout these early stages was Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with training and instructors."...
END of Excerpt
For the complete article as published in the November 24 Weekly Standard magazine: weeklystandard.com
Williams: “I think the case is not to refute it. I think the case is to prove it, and it's yet to be proven.”
Tapes could emerge of Saddam and Osama slow-dancing naked in Macy’s window, and Juan Williams would still not see the love.
So if Time Magazine and CNN report something, the rest of the media usually ignores it?
Do you dispute the substance of the report?
What evidence do you have to counter the facts listed in the report?
I've not seen anybody challenge the facts in the report. I've only seen official statements that refuse to agree (or disagree) with the conclusions drawn from those facts.
Wrong. The evidence is strong, they just don't want to go that route and here is why...
Insight Magazine
Sep 29, 2003
Senior investigators and analysts in the U.S. government have concluded that Iraq acted as a state sponsor of terrorism against Americans and logistically supported the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - confirming news reports that until now have emerged only in bits and pieces. A senior government official responsible for investigating terrorism tells Insight that while Saddam Hussein may not have had details of the Sept. 11 attacks in advance, he "gave assistance for whatever al-Qaeda came up with." That assistance, confirmed independently, came in a variety of ways, including financial support spun out through a complex web of financial institutions in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy and elsewhere. Long suspected of having terrorist ties to al-Qaeda, they now have been linked to Iraq as well.
Insiders say the failure to assign responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks to Iraq, Afghanistan or any other nation-state is intentional. "The administration does not want the victims of Sept. 11 interfering with its foreign policy," says Peter M. Leitner, director of the Washington Center for Peace and Justice (WCPJ). Leitner says the Bush administration may be concerned that if other victims of the Sept. 11 attacks also filed lawsuits and won civil-damage awards it would reduce Iraqi resources that the administration wants to use to rebuild the country. Leitner and others say this explains Bush's reticence at this time to report the convincing evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda that has been collected by U.S. investigators and private organizations seeking damages. "The [Bush] administration is intentionally changing the topic," claims Leitner, and sidestepping the issue that "Iraq has been in a proxy war against the U.S. for years and has used al-Qaeda in that war against the United States."
That's both false and irrelevant. The Administration has never said that Saddam or Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. What they've said is that there is no concrete evidence linking the two. Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. They've made that exact point so many times its like a broken record. Yet still, people get it wrong.
Moreover, the CIA memo does not claim that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. It does say that Iraq had something to do with Al Qaeda. That's significant because contact between Iraq and Al Qaeda refutes the argument that Iraq and Al Qaeda would never work together.
"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks "
President Bush
Which CIA memo? The Feith Memo, I have read, is related to the Office of Special Plans not the CIA. The CIA has for many months criticized the way intelligence reports were handled by the OSP.
So if Time Magazine and CNN report something, the rest of the media usually ignores it?
To this day, the official position of this administration is that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 (as just one example.)
No, the official position is that they have no concrete evidence linking them to that specific event. But they do not take the position that Iraq did not have a connection to 911. They just say nothing has emerged that makes the case.
The case that the Saddam Hussein regime had connections to Al Qaeda in general is pretty much solid, even if the Bush Administration is still reluctant to state it that way. The evidence is out there for all to see.
I believe the Bush Administration’s reluctance to officially conclude the obvious has more to do with political timing than anything else. In other words, they will lay their conclusion and declassified evidence on the table sometime next summer, when it will have the most impact.
Oddly enough, all my friends have no interest in politics at all. I did have one friend interested in politics but he passed away about a year ago.
But Cheney isn't...
Here is a Press the Meat transcript:
MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.
MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know. You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn’t have any evidence of that. Subsequent to that, we’ve learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization.
We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.
Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact. With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know. [The Czechs still stand by their story on the Prague meeting]
More [links between 9/11 and 1993 WTC bombing]:
According to a report Sunday by the Associated Press, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "told his interrogators he had worked in 1994 and 1995 in the Philippines with Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah on the foiled Bojinka plot to blow up 12 Western airliners simultaneously in Asia."Yousef, of course, was the man who plotted and executed the failed 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who entered the U.S. on an Iraqi passport the year before and whose partner in the plot, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was granted sanctuary by Saddam Hussein after the attack. Yasin is still at large.
Unmentioned by the AP, Mohammed's account of meetings with Yousef has been corroborated by Yousef's Bojinka partner, Abdul Hakim Murad. After his capture in 1995, Murad told the FBI that he and Yousef were contacted by Mohammed repeatedly during their time in the Philippines. Murad's FBI 302 witness statements detailing the contacts are reprinted in the new book "1000 Years for Revenge," by investigative reporter Peter Lance.
Another intriguing detail unmentioned by the AP, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is Ramzi Yousef's uncle.
Just last week, new documents uncovered by U.S. investigators in Iraq implicated Saddam's regime in the 1993 attack.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Account Links 9/11 to '93 WTC Attack
It has been proven that Saddam also harbored one of the 1993 WTC bombing culprits [mentioned by Cheney as well]:
Eight years have passed since Abdul Rahman Yasin bade hasty farewell to New York and flew to Baghdad. There he initially passed the time by fielding telephone calls placed by solicitous FBI agents and finding a niche in Saddam Hussein's police state. By all appearances, Yasin has lived a quiet, secluded life there.Bush on Oct. 10 named Yasin as one of the world's 22 Most Wanted Terrorists for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Bush's list is headed by Osama bin Laden and his cohorts in al-Qaida, the terror group accused of finishing the destruction of the New York landmark begun by Yasin and others.
There is no doubt about Yasin's whereabouts after the 1993 outrage. The FBI agents who perfunctorily questioned Yasin in New York and were conned by his pleasant manner quickly understood their mistake in letting him go. They got his brother to telephone Yasin in Baghdad repeatedly to ask him to come back for more questioning. Guess what? Mr. Yasin sent his regrets.
In 1998 then-FBI Director Louis Freeh said publicly that the fugitive was "hiding in his native Iraq." The Iraqi National Congress, the leading anti-Saddam movement, earlier obtained a photograph of Yasin in Baghdad and provided it to Washington. Every indication points to Yasin's not having left Iraq since then, a senior U.S. official tells me.
Will We Find Abdul Rahman Yasin?
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