No Credible Evidence

Today the panel investigating the 9/11 attacks announced that it found no credible evidence that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda prior to the attacks:

"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the report said. "Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaida and Iraq."

Well, duh. I mean, that's pretty much been ironclad for a while now, right? Er, well except in the mind of Dick Cheney, who was still pushing that line on Monday, which stirred up a hornet's nest in the White House press room yesterday as the gaggle grilled Scott McLellan on the administration's continued refusal to clarify this position [via TPM]:

Q Can I ask about Vice President Cheney, because yesterday he repeated what is a very controversial claim. He said that Saddam Hussein had long-established ties with al Qaeda. Does the President believe that Saddam Hussein had long-established ties with al Qaeda?

MR. McCLELLAN: We certainly talked about the ties with terrorism between the -- between the regime that was removed from power, and we talked about those ties prior to the decision to remove that regime from power. So that was well-documented. Secretary Powell went before the United Nations and talked about some of those ties to terrorism, as well. And Zarqawi is certainly a senior al Qaeda associate who was in Iraq prior to the decision to go in and remove the regime from power.

Q There's also al Qaeda in the United States. That does not mean the United States is cooperating with those members of al Qaeda. Just by the presence of someone does not mean there's a cooperation.

MR. McCLELLAN: But, remember, we're talking about an oppressive regime that was in power in Iraq that exercised control over that country. And go back and look at what we documented, Norah. We documented all this, and I think that's what the Vice President was referring to.

Q So today you're saying the President does agree there were long --

MR. McCLELLAN: We stand by what we've said previously, in terms of the regime's ties to terrorism, yes. And I think that's what the Vice President was referring to.

Q The President said there were no ties in the run up to the war.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, that's a mischaracterization. There were clear ties to terrorism between the regime --

Q He said there were no ties with al Qaeda.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- certainly supporting suicide bombers in the Middle East.

Q Are you repudiating what the President said?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I think you're talking about September 11th.

What a bunch of jackasses. Admitting there were no ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda would remove one of the pillars of justification for the Iraq war, which would leave the entire weight of justification leaning on... well, not much really. We can't have that - I mean, otherwise people would think that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq the way we did.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Comments

[j.j.]

Liars, liars, liars!

[Nick]

Morons! The panel refutes ties between al-qaeda and Iraq with specific reference to the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. As Colin Powell said today, “I think we have said, and it is clear, that there is a connection, and we have seen these connections between al-Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein and we stick with that.”

Find an instance where Bush or someone high in the administration made a direct 9/11 connection, and I’ll give you a vote for Kerry. The best I could find was a speech from October 8, 2002, posted at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html.

“We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.”

So who’s not telling the truth now?

[Nick]

Here's a working link

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html

[Nick]

And more! On September 18, 2003, the BBC reported:

"US President George Bush has said there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 11 September attacks."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3118262.stm

Stop distorting the truth!

[Jim]

Thank you Nick, for showing the real truth.

[Chrish]

What I find interesting is how a panel empowered to investigate the tragedy of 9/11 and how all of the various intelligence agencies, departments,
Excutive branch failed in preventing that tragic day suddenly includes an attempt at indicting the war in Iraq?

Sounds like the same BS that went on with the Starr investigations into Whitewater that suddenly twisted into Clinton's extramarital affairs and then distorted into an attempt at impeaching him...

Politics as usual.. Tit for Tat. Republicans
politicize then the Democrats politicize next
the Republicans will politicize some future event or tragedy then the Democrats then the Republicans
on and on and on....

Politicians really suck.. Perhaps what is needed is a world wide referendum to ban all politicians
and their self serving agendas. Now that would be kick..

[Nick]

I second!

[j.j.]

Nick,
if you want to call people names, then please go to the yahoo chat sites. No matter how much we disagree and, admittedly taunt each other sometimes on this site, we refrain from calling others "morons" and the like.

So, since we have had extensive ties (to put it mildly) to Osama and Saddam dating back to the early 80's, does that mean we are also a terrorist state?

[Jim]

Don't worry, Nick. Since you disagree with the majority of people on this site you will be called plenty of names and receive many insults. It's just only supposed to go one way.

[Nick]

I was actually using the word “moron” to refer to those media types who spinned and lied about this story. I suppose I may have also been referring to those who believed all of these reports, but I’m sure that no one here did (but if you did, I appologize for the insult).

[Jim]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/18/saddam.terror/index.html

Putin and Russia warned the U.S. that Iraq was a threat. Wait, I'm trying to remember if Putin is a Democrat or a Republican. That's weird, there was no threat.

[j.j.]

ah yes, I have been waiting for someone to post this. First, the Russians are busy protecting Saddam because they want his business, but now, when he says something contradictory, Putin must be the bearer of supreme truth. Notice the hypocracy of this stance, anyone? I must remind you that this is the same Putin who occupies, kills and oppresses Chechnyans under the guise of war on terrorism. That, of course, doesn't make this bit of intelligence wrong, but I do have one (I think) valid question:

why was this intelligence not passed on before the war? remember that anything that we presented then turned into shere BS within a matter of days, so if this is real, then how come Bush didn't publicize it then? I can't speculate on reasons, but maybe someone has a suggestion. (honestly, I'm not trying to make anything partisan out of this. it could be that the intelligence is valid, but why wait until now?)

[j.j.]

an editorial by USATODAY, hardly a bastion of wild-eyed liberals. In line with Jim, they conclude "The administration did not assert that Saddam was involved in 9/11." But unlike Jim, they don't end the argument there and dig a bit deeper. Remember that the senior editors of USATODAY supported the war beforehand, then about a year later, issued a column admitting that their support was a mistake. Anyways, enjoy...

Flash back to March 2003. The attack on al-Qaeda's Afghanistan bases is over, and the start of the Iraq war is less than a week away. If polls are to be believed, the two invasions are fused in the public mind — a seamless response to the still-vivid 9/11 terrorist attacks. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll found that an overwhelming 88% of the public believed Saddam Hussein supported terrorist groups that had plans to attack the USA.
Now that appears to be untrue.

On Wednesday, the bipartisan commission investigating 9/11 said it found no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda "cooperated on attacks" against the USA. While al-Qaeda tried to build a relationship, the panel's staff said, Iraq never responded.

The disclosure prompted presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry to charge that President Bush had led the nation to war on false pretenses — as serious an accusation as a candidate can level. The White House counterattacked, saying the administration had never claimed a direct link between Saddam and 9/11. Further, it said, evidence of contact between the two organizations cited by the commission was reason enough to act.

Cut away all of the political maneuvering, and the truth is this:

• The administration's case for going to war did not rest solely on the terrorist link. More weighty were its assertions that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and that he was defying the United Nations and violating agreements that ended the Persian Gulf War.

The administration did not assert that Saddam was involved in 9/11.

• But President Bush and Vice President Cheney did repeatedly claim that Saddam was tied to al-Qaeda. Before, during and after the war — in fact, as recently as this week — they used that link to justify the Iraq war.

The claim — always in question — now appears highly unlikely. And that, combined with the surprising failure to turn up any weapons of mass destruction, casts the basis of the administration's decision to go to war into grave doubt.

Cheney linked Saddam to al-Qaeda as early as December 2001, when he pointed to a meeting between lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in Prague, Czech Republic, and a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the 9/11 attacks. But the 9/11 panel's staff said it doesn't believe the meeting ever took place.

In the lead-up to the war, Bush himself spoke of Saddam's links to al-Qaeda. In a Feb. 8, 2003, radio address, he talked of eight meetings since the early 1990s between Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda, as well as Iraqi aid to the terror group. The commission's staff said that while al-Qaeda had contacts with Iraq, the contacts didn't appear to result in any "collaborative relationship."

In September 2003, Cheney again implied an Iraq link to 9/11. He called Iraq the "geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." A few days later, Bush contradicted Cheney. "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with" the 9/11 plot, Bush said. Yet, just this week, Cheney again insisted that Saddam "had long-established ties with al-Qaeda."

Even a day after the commission's report, the administration was struggling to present any hard evidence to support its claims of Saddam links to al-Qaeda.

That does not necessarily prove that the administration aimed to deceive, as Kerry implied. But it does argue strongly that one administration justification for war is severely flawed.

It's important, however, to separate the reality of pre-war Iraq from the reality today. Whether the war was justified or not, post-war Iraq most certainly has become a front in the war on terrorism. That is evident in the headlines every day. Were the U.S. to abandon Iraq to chaos, civil war or hostile control, parts of it undoubtedly would provide shelter for terrorists.

The question that lingers is whether the war, in the end, will have snuffed out a terrorist threat or created one. That answer will depend on actions not yet taken — and on a more accurate assessment of the threat than existed before the war began.

[j.j.]

I lifted this from another webblog:

A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands. Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.
In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.

He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war against terror" yesterday with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek Mohammed, who was one of al-Qaida's protectors in Waziristan.

But Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in the hunt for Bin Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area. We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes President Pervez Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. "He walks a very fine line," he said yesterday.

Imperial Hubris is the latest in a relentless stream of books attacking the administration in election year. Most of the earlier ones, however, were written by embittered former officials. This one is unprecedented in being the work of a serving official with nearly 20 years experience in counter-terrorism who is still part of the intelligence establishment.

The fact that he has been allowed to publish, albeit anonymously and without naming which agency he works for, may reflect the increasing frustration of senior intelligence officials at the course the administration has taken.

Peter Bergen, the author of two books on Bin Laden and al-Qaida, said: "His views represent an amped-up version of what is emerging as a consensus among intelligence counter-terrorist professionals."

Anonymous does not try to veil his contempt for the Bush White House and its policies. His book describes the Iraq invasion as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage.

"Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject, even wilful failure to recognise the ideological power, lethality and growth potential of the threat personified by Bin Laden, as well as the impetus that threat has been given by the US-led invasion and occupation of Muslim Iraq."

In his view, the US missed its biggest chance to capture the al-Qaida leader at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in December 2001. Instead of sending large numbers of his own troops, General Tommy Franks relied on surrogates who proved to be unreliable.

"For my money, the game was over at Tora Bora," Anonymous said.

Yesterday President Bush repeated his assertion that Bin Laden was cornered and that there was "no hole or cave deep enough to hide from American justice".

Anonymous said: "I think we overestimate significantly the stress [Bin Laden's] under. Our media and sometimes our policymakers suggest he's hiding from rock to rock and hill to hill and cave to cave. My own hunch is that he's fairly comfortable where he is."

The death and arrest of experienced operatives might have set back Bin Laden's plans to some degree but when it came to his long-term capacity to threaten the US, he said, "I don't think we've laid a glove on him".

"What I think we're seeing in al-Qaida is a change of generation," he said."The people who are leading al-Qaida now seem a lot more professional group.

"They are more bureaucratic, more management competent, certainly more literate. Certainly, this generation is more computer literate, more comfortable with the tools of modernity. I also think they're much less prone to being the Errol Flynns of al-Qaida. They're just much more careful across the board in the way they operate."

As for weapons of mass destruction, he thinks that if al-Qaida does not have them already, it will inevitably acquire them.

The most likely source of a nuclear device would be the former Soviet Union, he believes. Dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons, could be home-made by al-Qaida's own experts, many of them trained in the US and Britain.

Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place.

"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.

"One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."

The White House has yet to comment publicly on Imperial Hubris, which is due to be published on July 4, but intelligence experts say it may try to portray him as a professionally embittered maverick.

The tone of Imperial Hubris is certainly angry and urgent, and the stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from a highly sensitive job in the late 90s.

But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA counter-terrorism centre, said he had been vindicated by events. "He is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of the subject."

Anonymous believes Mr Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy.

He said: "It's going to take 10,000-15,000 dead Americans before we say to ourselves: 'What is going on'?"

I think I already know how the White House and it's apologists are going to attack the author in order to diminish the message and it will probably work on a large number of people. But at some point, people are gonna have to realize that what Clarke, O'Neill, Zinni, other Clark and this guy have said is probably true. We are not winning this war and by invading Iraq, we did Osama the biggest favor yet.

[Jim]

What's up with the above cut and paste, J.J.?

[j.j.]

I don't understand the question. What's wrong with the cut and paste?

[Jeff]

Speaking of no credible evidence, anyone astounded by the erroneous State Department report on how terrorism went down when it actually went up? We've been making a lot of ethical arguments about the current administration, but what if much of it is simply due to incompetence and stupidity?

After finding no WMD, no nuclear shipment in Africa, no 45 minutes, no bio labs, and no serious connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, you would think that someone would bother to count the number of people killed by terrorists before issuing a false report. If Bush were a normal boss, he be forced to do some serious firing if he were at all interested in the good of the company. Why he doesn't is beyond me.

[j.j.]

yes, that was kind of weird and, if I did that at my job, it would have been highly embarrassing. But holding people beneath him accountable is not something Bush is likely to do, because, as anyone knows, no matter what happens, responsibility always goes to the man/woman at the top. And taking responsibility simply does not happen in this man's administration. Ironic, since he is always talking of people's personal responsibility. Whatever, no one seems to care about this.

[j.j.]

Nick and Jim,

read this link to find specific references by the administration to Iraq and al-Qaeda, including 9/11

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/23/cheney_speak/

[J.J.]

I read your link. Did you read it? It still didn't say where Bush ever said Saddam was involved in 9/11.
Before the war a good part of the world thought he had wmd, even if they didn't want the war. Why were Saddam and his scientists so evasive with weapons inspectors? What were they hiding? Were they hiding the fact that they didn't want Saddam to know they didn't have as much as he hoped? Or were they really hiding the wmd which is now out of the country. It's documented that he had them. And it's not documented how he got rid of them.

Anyway the war was not just about wmd. It was about making an example of someone who harbored and rewarded terrorists, defied the U.N. and killed hundreds of thousands of his neighbors and own citizens. It's also about setting up a democratic state in the middle east, whereby giving people a stake in teir own future. They don't get that anywhere else in the middle east - even though a few places have limited elections.
No job, no hope, no say and clerics saying it's all someone else's fault breeds terrorism. I know which parts of this argument you like to pick out. This is why I say and believe it's not just one thing, it's the accumulation of all of it.

[Jim]

Oops. Sorry, the above was posted by me, not J.J. I was addressing J.J. my bad.

[Chrish]

LOL!!! Oooooh Jim, be careful, you're morphing
into J.J. and he just might take issue with that..

:o)

[j.j.]

I don't believe it's any of it, I believe all those reasons you just listed were convenient excuses.
Please don't try to tell me that pathetic Rumsfeld line that WMDs are all in some ship floating in the Persian Gulf. It's so silly.

[Jim]

I'm not going to speculate on where they are. I'm just saying they were there once and it was never documented on how they were disposed of, if they were. Even Blix said Saddam and his people were misleading and gave very little information. Were they trying to fool Saddam?

[Jim]

Chrish, do you think I should accidently post myself as Jeff, too? :-)