'No Saddam link to Iraq al-Qaeda'

rimbaud · Sep 11, 2006

giddyup said:

I think it is the war opponents who want to insist on an identification of AQ and Saddam.
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You are right, it is the anti-war crowd that started it. From a 2004 Knight Ridder article:

* Vice President Dick Cheney told National Public Radio in January that there was "overwhelming evidence" of a relationship between Saddam and al-Qaida. 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.

* The administration tied Saddam 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-Qaida appears increasingly doubtful.
...
* Bush, Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell made much of occasional contacts between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida, dating to the early 1990s when bin Laden was based in the Sudan. But intelligence indicates that nothing ever came of the contacts.
...
In a major address on the Iraqi threat on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush outlined a series of ties: "We know that Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network share a common enemy: the United States of America." He went on to say that Iraq and al-Qaida had high-level contacts over a decade, some al-Qaida leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq and "Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

In his January 2003 State of the Union address, Bush raised the possibility that Saddam "could provide one of his hidden weapons (of mass destruction) to terrorists or help them develop their own."

Yet Tenet had told Congress the previous October that Saddam would take that "extreme step" only if he concluded that he couldn't deter a U.S.-led attack on his country.
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Wash Post a few days ago:

As recently as Aug. 21, Bush suggested a link between Hussein and Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed by U.S. forces this summer. But a CIA assessment in October 2005 concluded that Hussein's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates," according to the report.
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From a Wash Post article in June:

Bush, speaking to troops in Tampa yesterday, did not mention an Iraq-al Qaeda link, saying only that Iraq "sheltered terrorist groups." That was a significantly milder version of the allegations administration officials have made since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In late 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official before the attacks, in April 2000 in Prague; Cheney later said the meeting could not be proved or disproved.

Bush, in his speech aboard an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003, asserted: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding."

In September, Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press": "If we're successful in Iraq . . . then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

Speaking about Iraq's alleged links to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney connected Iraq to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by saying that newly found Iraqi intelligence files in Baghdad showed that a participant in the bombing returned to Iraq and "probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven." He added: "The Iraqi government or the Iraqi intelligence service had a relationship with al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s."

Shortly after Cheney asserted these links, Bush contradicted him, saying: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th." But Bush added: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties."

In January, Cheney repeated his view that Iraq was tied to al Qaeda, saying that "there's overwhelming evidence" of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. He said he was "very confident there was an established relationship there."
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Wiki also has a pretty decent timeline that backs up your position about the antiwar crowd.

giddyup · Sep 12, 2006

rimbaud, I know you're too smart to completely miss my point-- unless you are doing it deliberately.

The war is on Terror and Terrorists-- al Qaeda and Saddam included but not equated.

The opponents have been trying to undermine the war commmitment by pointing up the separation of AQ and Saddam, so naturally the admiistration counters with attempts to link the two.

I'm sure there is conflicting intel on this matter as well-- regardless of what gets published or orated.

I think the admin was had on the PR battle here. They certainly over-stated their case in many instances...

krosfyah · Sep 12, 2006

giddyup said:

...
The war is on Terror and Terrorists-- al Qaeda and Saddam included but not equated.
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...and you are missing MY point.

Who was it that expanded the war from simply going after the guys that bombed us TO a "War on Terror?" You said yourself the "War on Terror" speech was given in 2003.

Since the war on terror was lauched 2 years AFTER 9/11, what was the driving factor that drove us to expand the war effort beyond Afghanastan and AQ terror cells?

Lets hear it.

rimbaud · Sep 12, 2006

giddyup said:

The opponents have been trying to undermine the war commmitment by pointing up the separation of AQ and Saddam, so naturally the admiistration counters with attempts to link the two.
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If by counter you mean bring up and make connections to Iraq while everyone else was still thinking Afghanistan, Taliban, and Al Qaida, then yeah, the Bush admin countered opponents starting in 2001.

If I say that I think your mom has ties to ugly and you respond that she doesn't does that mean that I was countering your argument of "no ties to ugly" (no, I am not calling your mom ugly, just using a playground example)?

vlaurelio · Sep 13, 2006

yes there are links, here's one..

2,973 dead americans caused by 911 attacks
2,974 and counting dead american military service members caused by Iraq war of agression 5 years later

The Real Link Between 9/11 and Iraq (Finally) Revealed

FranchiseBlade · Sep 15, 2006

Why does the Bush administration keep trying to lie about the ties?

OLBERMANN: If the Iraq debate seems especially exhausting, it may be due to the steady erosion of the foundation for any productive debate, facts.

Our fourth story on the COUNTDOWN tonight, the persistent lie a link, a preexisting link, between Iraq and al Qaeda. President Bush last week told CBS News, quote, “One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.” Of course, any good boss knows how to delegate the hard stuff. And so the past several days have seen a veritable assault by his staff on what, in any other plane of existence, would constitute consensus reality, the knowledge, known to the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Britain, and Israel, to the 9/11 Commission, to, most recently, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, and to many of your sharper domesticated farm animals, that al Qaeda and Iraq were not partners, allies, or even friends.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

RICE: There were ties going on between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein‘s regime going back for a decade.

There were ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

TIM RUSSERT, HOST: And the meeting with Atta did not occur.

CHENEY: We don‘t know. You‘ve got Iraq and al Qaeda testimony from the director of CIA that there was indeed a relationship, Zarqawi in Baghdad, et cetera.

SNOW: There was no direct operational relationship, but there was a relationship.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

OLBERMANN: What happens when reality, in the form of that Senate report, dares to intrude? Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

RUSSERT: Committee said that there was no relationship. In fact, Saddam...

CHENEY: I haven‘t seen the report. I haven‘t had a chance to read it yet.

SNOW: But the Senate report—rather than get, you know—and I don‘t want to get into the vagaries of the Senate report.
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It is hilarious that Tony Snow is calling the fact that the report says there are no ties "vagaries"

Seriously, why is the administration still trying to peddle discredited crap on the American people?

And here is reporter Johnathon Alter discussing the bizarre behavior and the Bush's administration retreat from facts.

OLBERMANN: Let‘s start with the basics. Americans, even media types, especially in crises, historically give top government officials a presumption of credibility until proven dastardly. I mean, we remembered the “Maine” for 75 years, till it was pretty much proven the Spanish did not blow it up, it was an accident. How much of that presumption of governmental credibility remains?

ALTER: I‘d say between zero and none, at least as far as the media goes, and I think any sentient American at this point, they‘ve lost their credibility many, many times over.

Does that mean they‘ve lost the argument? No, because, as you‘ve been indicating, facts often don‘t determine the resolution of the arguments. So they could end up winning in November by distorting the argument. But on credibility and the facts, they‘ve lost.

They remind me of, you know, a politician who‘s caught in bed with a prostitute, and his wife comes in and sees him, and he looks up and says to her, Who do you believe, me or your cheating eyes? You know, they don‘t have any credibility anymore, so they just assert something that ain‘t so and hope that it plays.

OLBERMANN: In particular, regarding Iraq and al Qaeda, and the link that does not exist, except in the minds, or at least the speechifying, of the administration, is the essential problem here, is the turning point, the hinge, what the noted political historian Daffy Duck called pronoun trouble? I mean, does the current administration see all terrorists as equal and one, and therefore, to them, there really is a link between all bad guys? Is it that simple?

ALTER: Yes, I think we‘ll see this as the period of the great conflation, that conflate, you know, people who‘ve been fighting each other for 700 years, Sunnis and Shi‘ites, and they throw them all, they lump them all together.

It‘s a little bit like what happened during the cold war, when all commies were the same. You know, it was about 15 years after the split between the Soviets and the Chinese communists that Washington finally acknowledged that they didn‘t actually like each other. Before that, it was all commies are all the same.

It helps to unify the country to fight by lumping everybody in together. So that‘s part of what‘s happening.

Look, (INAUDIBLE), Keith, most people aren‘t paying a lot of attention to all this head-slamming at the line of scrimmage in Washington. The Republicans just want to get through one message, We want to kill the terrorists more than the other guys. The Democrats, in turn, want the message to be, The war in Iraq is a disaster.

So everything that you‘re hearing from the Republicans is just to drive home that first message.

OLBERMANN: Let‘s look long term. How much do you think the undermining of consensus reality threatens this country‘s ability to engage in meaningful debate about threats we face, whether they‘re terrorists, otherwise, whatever next comes down the pike?

ALTER: It‘s a tremendous problem, because if you move from an evidence-based foreign policy, or domestic policy, to a—what you could call a faith-based policy, which takes you out of the realm of facts, out of the realm of rational policy-making that gone on in both Democratic and Republican administrations for many, many years, you‘re into a whole different place.

You know, the author Ron Susskind heard about three years ago from an official in the Bush White House, Hey, you guys aren‘t relevant anymore. You‘re in what he called the reality-based community.

We‘ve moved to a different place. So they‘re recognizing that facts are for wimps, and that, you know, strength belongs to people who can craft the truth for their own purposes.

The problem is, that way eventually lies tyranny, not here in the United States, but in a larger cosmic sense. If you lose a common ground of facts on which to move forward as a society, nobody can agree on anything, and you can‘t pull together to solve problems.

OLBERMANN: But everybody who‘s tried that here, dating back to the Alien and Sedition Acts, and at 1801, eventually there‘s been a tipping point in which that faith-based reality has evaporated. Is there a tipping point coming? Is there something to wake people up about this?

ALTER: Oh, I think we‘ve woken up. And that‘s the good news, Keith. You know, you have a president who is at historically low levels of popularity. When we see that he went up a little bit in a last couple days, it takes our eye off the ball. The American people figured this out after Katrina. That was the tipping point.

So he is—he will be seen as incompetent no matter what he says, no matter what kind of arguments he makes, and even if the Democrats hold onto Congress.

OLBERMANN: I agree with you on the timing of that. It‘s just like all tipping points, it may not be measured immediately.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14833620/

Condi is such a liar, this whole administration has done such a disservice to our nation that it baffles me they are allowed to run around free.

mc mark · Sep 15, 2006

Today's WaPo...

CIA knew Bin Laden, Iraq unlinked

Senate report shows intelligence community knew in 2002 ties were nonexistent, despite public claims by the president

By Walter Pincus
WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON - The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Although President Bush and other senior administration officials were at that time regularly linking Saddam to al-Qaida, the CIA's highly sensitive intelligence supporting a contrary view was apparently not passed on to the White House or senior Bush policymakers.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, and two GOP colleagues on the committee disclosed this information for the first time in the panel's reports on Iraq released last week. They wrote in the additional views section of the report that the cabinet-level Iraqi official in September 2002 "said that Iraq has no past, current, or anticipated future contact with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda," and that the official "added that bin Laden was in fact a longtime enemy of Iraq."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401545.html

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