Posted on 11/07/2005 5:19:35 PM PST by satchmodog9
WASHINGTON, (AFP) - US military intelligence warned the Bush administration as early as February 2002 that its key source on Al-Qaeda's relationship with Iraq had provided "intentionally misleading" data, according to a declassified report.
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Nevertheless, eight months later, President George W. Bush went public with charges that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein had trained members of Osama bin Laden's terror network in manufacturing deadly poisons and gases.
These same accusations had found their way into then-secretary of state Colin Powell's February 2003 speech before the UN Security Council, in which he outlined the US rationale for military action against Iraq.
"This newly declassified information provides additional, dramatic evidence that the administrations pre-war statements were deceptive," said Democrat Carl Levin, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who pushed for partial declassification of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document.
The report provides a critical analysis of information provided by Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an Islamic radical and bin Laden associate, who served as senior military trainer at a key Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan before it was destroyed by US forces in late 2001.
In captivity, al-Libi initially told his DIA debriefers that Al-Qaeda operatives had received training from Iraq in manufacturing poisons and deadly chemical agents.
But the DIA, according to its assessment, did not find the information credible.
US military intelligence officers concluded that al-Libi lacked "specific details on the Iraqis involved, the... materials associated with the assistance and the location where training occurred," the report said.
"It is possible," the document went on to say, "he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers."
The DIA suggested al-Libi, who had been under interrogation for several weeks, "may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest."
Just the same, president Bush insisted during an October 2002 trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, that his administration had learned that "Iraq has trained Al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."
He repeated the same charge in February 2003.
The administration's drumbeat over alleged Iraq-Qaeda ties reached a crescendo that same month when Powell went before the United Nations to accuse Iraq of hiding tons of chemical and biological weapons and nurturing nuclear ambitions.
His speech, according to congressional officials, even contained a direct reference to al-Libi's testimony, albeit not his name.
"I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al-Qaeda," insisted the secretary of state, who now says he regrets voicing many of the charges contained in that speech.
The unveiling of the documents came as Senate Democrats are stepping up pressure on their Republican colleagues, trying to force them to complete a second report on pre-war intelligence that would focus on whether members of the Bush administration had misused or intentionally misinterpreted intelligence findings.
The first report on the role of US intelligence agencies in the run-up to the war was released in June 2004.
Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat of the Senate intelligence committee, said the case of al-Libi illustrates the need to look into how pre-war intelligence was used.
"He's an entirely unreliable individual upon whom the White House was placing substantial intelligence trust," the senator said of al-Libi Sunday. "And that is a classic example of a lack of accountability to the American people."
Al-Libi formally recanted last year, according to congressional officials.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/02/11/powell.binladen/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/02/11/terrorism.congress/index.html
http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/804yqqnr.asp
THANK YOU!!!
But but but didn't we find 500 million trillion tons of yellow cake uranium in Saddam's palaces shortly after we invaded Iraq??????????????
"Powell said Zarqawi had both planned the October 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan and set up a camp in Ansar al-Islam’s territory in northeastern Iraq to train terrorists in the use of chemical weapons. Powell added that senior Iraqi and al-Qaeda leaders had met at least eight times since the early 1990s."
Hasn't this Zarqawi fellow been in the news lately?
"In a series of television interviews broadcast on the program Frontline, several former Iraqi military officers described Salman Pak as a highly secret terrorist training location for both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs. Sabah Khodada, a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992, said:
Training includes hijacking and kidnapping of airplanes, trains, public buses, and planting explosives in cities, assassinations. And the training also includes how to prepare for suicidal operations. For example, they will train them how to belt themselves with explosives and jump in a place and explode themselves."
"Khodada also confirmed numerous press reports that Salman Pak had an entire Boeing 707 jetliner that was used for training in hijacking techniques — from smuggling weapons on board to methods for overpowering the crew and terrorizing passengers into cowed submission."
"In the time since the September 11 attacks in the United States, intelligence reports have confirmed that al Qaeda terrorists escaping from Afghanistan are now present in Iraq."
This is one thing the administration could have shoved down everyones throats and they didn't. It really confuses the crap out of me.
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