Posted on 03/04/2004 5:59:22 AM PST by JohnGalt
Hussein ties to al Qaeda appear faulty
The administration's case on ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda relied on intelligence that was weaker than that on Iraq's illegal weapons programs.
By WARREN P. STROBEL, JONATHAN S. LANDAY AND JOHN WALCOTT
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's assertion that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda -- one of the administration's central arguments for a preemptive war -- appears to have been based on even less solid intelligence than the administration's claims that Iraq had hidden stocks of chemical and biological weapons.
Nearly a year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has turned up to verify allegations of Hussein's links with al Qaeda, and several key parts of the administration's case have either proved false or seem increasingly doubtful.
Senior U.S. officials now say there never was any evidence that Hussein's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were in league. At most, there were occasional meetings.
Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community never concluded that those meetings produced an operational relationship, American officials said. That verdict was in a secret report by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence that was updated in January 2003, on the eve of the war.
''We could find no provable connection between Saddam and al Qaeda,'' a senior U.S. official acknowledged.
The administration's allegations that Hussein still had weapons of mass destruction have been the subject of much greater public and political controversy than its suggestions that Iraq and al Qaeda were in league. They were based on the Iraqi leader's long history of duplicity regarding such weapons, which appeared to be confirmed by spy satellite photographs, information from defectors and electronic eavesdropping.
But the evidence of Iraq's ties to al Qaeda was always sketchy, based largely on testimony of Iraqi defectors and prisoners, with limited reports from foreign agents and electronic eavesdropping.
Much of the evidence that's now available indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda had no close ties, despite repeated contacts between the two; that the terrorists who administration officials claimed were links between the two had no direct connection to either Hussein or bin Laden; and that a key meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and one of the leaders of the Sept. 11 attacks probably never happened.
A Knight Ridder review of the Bush administration statements on Iraq's links to terrorism and what's now known about the classified intelligence has found that administration advocates of a preemptive invasion frequently hyped sketchy and sometimes false information to help make their case. Twice they neglected to report information that painted a less sinister picture.
The Bush administration has defended its prewar descriptions of Hussein and is calling Iraq ''the central front in the war on terrorism,'' as the president told U.S. troops two weeks ago.
But before the war and since, Bush and his aides made rhetorical links that now appear to have been leaps:
Vice President Dick Cheney told National Public Radio in January that there was ''overwhelming evidence'' of a relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda. Among the evidence he cited was Iraq's harboring of Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Cheney didn't mention that Iraq had offered to turn over Yasin to the FBI in 1998, in return for a U.S. statement acknowledging that Iraq had no role in that attack. The Clinton administration refused the offer, because it was unwilling to reward Iraq for returning a fugitive.
Administration officials reported that Farouk Hijazi, a top Iraqi intelligence officer, had met with bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1998 and offered him safe haven in Iraq.
They left out the rest of the story, however. Bin Laden said he would consider the offer, U.S. intelligence officials said. But according to a report later made available to the CIA, the al Qaeda leader told an aide afterward that he had no intention of accepting Saddam's offer because ``if we go there, it would be his agenda, not ours.''
The administration linked Hussein to a terrorism network run by Palestinian Abu Musab al Zarqawi. That network may be behind the latest violence in Iraq, which killed at least 143 people Tuesday.
But U.S. officials say the evidence that Zarqawi had close operational ties to al Qaeda appears increasingly doubtful.
Asked for Cheney's views on Iraq and terrorism, vice presidential spokesman Kevin Kellems referred Knight Ridder to the vice president's television interviews Tuesday.
Cheney, in an interview with CNN, said Zarqawi ran an ''al Qaeda-affiliated'' group. He cited an intercepted letter that Zarqawi is believed to have written to al Qaeda leaders, and a White House official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity said the CIA has described Zarqawi as an al Qaeda ``associate.''
But U.S. officials say the Zarqawi letter contained a plea for help that al Qaeda rebuffed.
Iraqi defectors alleged that Saddam's regime was helping to train Iraqi and non-Iraqi Arab terrorists at a site called Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. The allegation made it into a September 2002 white paper that the White House issued. The U.S. military has found no evidence of such a facility.
Bush, Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell made much of occasional contacts between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda, dating to the early 1990s when bin Laden was based in the Sudan. But intelligence indicates that nothing ever came of the contacts.
The original Salman Pak story came from two sources supplied by the INC and Ahmed Chalabi who is boasting how he was able to get the United States to topple Saddam, if perhaps he floated some 'bad intelligence.'
Thus, every bit of intelligence sourced back to the INC must be put into question and it is also reasonable to investigate those who trusted and promoted the Chalabi dupe, which includes folks like Judith Miller at the NY Times, Laurie Mylroie and Richard Perle, and Dick Cheney. Were they duped? Or were they engaging in act of supreme anti-patriotism bordering on treason, believing that the execution of the policy was more important than either the Administration's integrity or the political whims of the citizenry who may not have supported the war unless they believed mushroom clouds in Cleveland were a real possibility?
When Perle two weeks ago called for heads to roll at CIA, there was bound to be open warfare, and stories like this are likely to continue.
Spin for the sheeple (pretending there was only ONE meeting). IIRC Czech intelligence claims no less than FOUR meetings, and U.S. intelligence only disputes one or two of those (because their timeline for Atta had him in a different location). We KNOW Atta went out of his way to visit Prague.
Yeah, and the adminstration never claimed an "operational" relationship (except with regard to Ansar al-Islam, where they were CORRECT). They claimed "links" (including training of al-Qaeda operatives by Iraq, which these "reporters" ignore).
Take away the B.S. and they are admitting we had a generally accurate picture, not withstanding that the article spins madly toward exactly the opposite claim.
Source for this?
There has been no taking up by the intelligence community that it was BS.
As to your "say no". Why should I? It was plain what your implication was. You wanted follow-up confirming a well documented find and I asked a perfectly good question: "Why is that necessary?" It was fully explained and described and photographed already.
Contrary to your assertion that the intelligence community has now decided "it was bs", you are the one who needs to provide "follow-up" documenting that.
This is not serious journalism but merely another example of the WP -- and John Galt -- running interference for John Kerry and the left.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.