How Bad Is the Senate Intelligence Report? Very bad. (Stephen Hayes)

The Weekly Standard ^ | 9-25-06 | Stephen Hayes

[ikez78]

According to a report released September 8 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Saddam Hussein "was resistant to cooperating with al Qaeda or any other Islamist groups." It's an odd claim. Saddam Hussein's regime has a long and well-documented history of cooperating with Islamists, including al Qaeda and its affiliates.

As early as 1982, the Iraqi regime was openly supporting, training, and funding the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization opposed to the secular regime of Hafez Assad. For years, Saddam Hussein cultivated warm relations with Hassan al-Turabi, the Islamist who was the de facto leader of the Sudanese terrorist state, and a man Bill Clinton described as "a buddy of [Osama] bin Laden's."

Throughout the 1990s, the Iraqi regime hosted Popular Islamic Conferences in Baghdad, gatherings modeled after conferences Turabi hosted in Khartoum. Mark Fineman, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, attended one of the conferences and filed a story about his experience on January 26, 1993. "There are delegates from the most committed Islamic organizations on Earth," he wrote. "Afghan mujahedeen (holy warriors), Palestinian militants, Sudanese fundamentalists, the Islamic Brotherhood and Pakistan's Party of Islam." Newsweek's Christopher Dickey attended the same conference and wrote about it in 2002. "Islamic radicals from all over the Middle East, Africa, and Asia converged on Baghdad," he wrote, "to show their solidarity with Iraq in the face of American aggression. . . . Every time I hear diplomats and politicians, whether in Washington or the capitals of Europe, declare that Saddam Hussein is a 'secular Baathist ideologue' who has nothing to do with Islamists or terrorist calls to jihad, I think of that afternoon and I wonder what they're talking about. If that was not a fledgling Qaeda itself at the Rashid convention, it sure was Saddam's version of it."

[Just mythoughts]

bttt

[ikez78]

Stephen Hayes PING

[PGalt]

Thanks very much for YOUR work...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1702368/posts

[ikez78]

Its the least I can do.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Great job!

B U M P

[January24th]

"The purpose of this section is to assess the accuracy of the Intelligence Community's prewar analysis on links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda using information collected since Operation Iraqi Freedom."

The obvious purpose is to distance themselves from their commitment to the war in Iraq so they can get re-elected. So they do a cursory comb-over on the bald truth and hope that Propecia Politics will cover the facts...and their own asses.

[TomGuy]

I found this article recently. It discusses some of the terrorist training, etc., that took place under Saddam in Salman Pak (Iraq).

Deroy Murdock article from 2003: The 9/11 Connection, What Salman Pak could reveal

Murdock quotes James Woolsey, President Clinton's CIA chief from 1993 to 1995: "I believe it is definitely more likely than not that some degree of common effort in the sense of aiding or abetting or conspiracy was involved here between Iraq and the al Qaeda," Woolsey said on March 3[, 2003].

[goldstategop]

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report was produced by liberal staff writers with a clear ideological axe to grind. From the evidence that was omitted, ignored, distorted and misrepresented in the report, it is clear there was an ongoing relationship between the Ba'athist regime and Al Qaeda. In fact, it is a relationship that continues to this very day. All we have for the report's tendentious and highly suspect claim that Saddam never had a relationship with much less than supported AQ is his own word. So the U.S Senate Intelligence Committee takes the word of a pathological psychopath in support of its preposterous theory that Saddam the secular dictator was opposed to the radical Islamofascist Osama Bin Laden. History begs to differ. We should leave the final and more revealing words on the subject to Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih:

And late last week, following the release of the Senate report, Barham Salih, deputy prime minister of Iraq, had this to say: "The alliance between the Baathists and jihadists which sustains al Qaeda in Iraq is not new, contrary to what you may have been told." Salih continued: "I know this at first hand. Some of my friends were murdered by jihadists, by al Qaeda-affiliated operatives who had been sheltered and assisted by Saddam's regime."

You won't find this anywhere in the Senate report since it contradicts the liberal staff writers' objective to create a halo around Saddam Hussein and to also advance the now discredited notion Iraq is NOT a central front in the War On Terror. The above facts will not make their way either into the Drive By Media. Some day, a full account of the relationship between the Saddam dictatorship and the terrorists it sponsored will be produced. As Stephen F. Hayes notes, given what we know about the Senate report, in view of its deficiencies and grave shortcomings, "is unlikely to merit even a footnote in [ such a future] history."

(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )

[gunnedah]

The US Senate consist of a bucnh of inept people who expect their every whim to be catered to. They are mostly figureheads and people trying to build their own little Kingdoms. America is truly in dire straights when we have people like this leading and that is how and why 9/11 came about to start with. These idiots cater to special interest and have little or not interest in those of us who elect them.

[jackv]

This is the very thing that republicans allow to get out there, the dems take it and run with it. We hear this twisted version as fact over and over and over by every liberal talking head.
I am really sick of the US senate--and yes, even the REPUBLICAN senate.

[MHGinTN]

I wonder, could someone post the names on the Committee and the leaders of the two parties, chairman of the Committee? I smell Warner and McCain.

[WoodstockCat]

"Senate" and "Intelligence" in one sentence...any questions?

[cwb]

Thanks for the ping. These people make me sick. Even before 9/11 and Bush was elected, we have news stories of Saddam offering sanctuary to UBL. Clinton's own DOJ via a Federal Judge in New York unveiled a sealed indictment of UBL in 1998. The indictment, unsealed later that same year, stated among other things that "Al Qaeda reached an agreement with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons development."

Even putting aside the question of UBL and AQ, Saddam's Iraq was still a major supporter of terrorists around the world. According to a State Department report, the terrorists whom Hussein backed had killed or injured more than 3,500 civilians outside Iraq. From Abbas to Nidal to Hamas...to their affilate organizations (PLF, PLO, ANO, Islamic Jihad, etc), Saddam provided safe-haven to the most wanted terrorists in the world.

These reasons alone made the ouster of Saddam a legitimate cause, especially since Saddam was prohibited by the Gulf War Cease Fire and following UN resolutions from associating with terrorists. (U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 paragraph 32). The fact that some people continue to ignore and lie about these alliances just exposes how dangerous they are to this country's security.

[sgtbono2002]

MEMBERSHIP

REPUBLICANS DEMOCRATS
Pat Roberts, Kansas
Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV
West Virginia, Vice Chairman
Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Carl Levin, Michigan
Mike Dewine, Ohio Dianne Feinstein, California
Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Ron Wyden, Oregon
Trent Lott, Mississippi Evan Bayh, Indiana
Olympia J. Snowe, Maine Barbara Mikulski
Maryland
Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Russell D. Feingold, Wisc.
Saxby Chambliss, Georgia

I would say the Demmies on there are pretty well known as terrorist enablers.. Chambliss ,Snowe, Dewine are easily explained as RINO trash
The one that foold me is Orren Hatch.

The frightening thing is this came from a republican majority Senate . Can you imagine what this country will be like if democrats take both houses.???

God save America.

[NCjim]

He was reluctant but the Devil made him do it... *g

[RoadTest]

I believe we have enemy moles in The Senate, called "Senators".

[MizSterious]

Thanks for this. The evidence is there and easily attained if someone is really interested in the truth--this group, with resources far beyond most armchair researchers, didn't consider it for only one possible reason: it didn't fit their agenda.

[litehaus]

Wasn't it J.W. here, that Ol'Slick didn't talk to for years?

[Chaguito]

I'm about to turn 60, so I have a little bit of perspective. But I have to ask, "Is this the first time in history that our politicians have been so intent, in so many ways, on subverting the nation?" Or is it simply a matter that I can now read about it outside the normal news media?

In either case, it's depressing, since it is almost impossible to unseat an incumbent senator. What radical action can thwart these self-aggrandizing enemies of the people they "represent?"