Iraq and Al Qaeda Connection?

[GSC Admin]

Why do they keep flip flopping on this issue?

First they said they were linked, then he flip flopped:
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www.thememoryhole.org/war/no-saddam-qaeda.htm

During one of his rare press conferences, President Bush admitted something which completely contradicts what we've been hearing from him, most other politicians, and the mainstream media. Not surprisingly, the media have completely ignored this; I couldn't find a single article that mentions it in any news source, domestic or foreign.

The occasion was a press conference with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, which took place in the White House on 31 January 2003. Here's the key portion:

[Adam Boulton, Sky News (London):] One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?

THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.

THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question.
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www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/2004/03/04/news/nation/8101079.htm

The Bush administration’s claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda — one of the administration’s central arguments for a pre-emptive 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 Saddam’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 Saddam’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. He and others spoke on condition of anonymity.

The administration’s allegations that Saddam 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 WMD, which appeared to be confirmed by spy satellite photographs, 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, supplemented with limited reports from foreign agents and electronic eavesdropping.

Much of the evidence that’s now available indicates:

• Iraq and al Qaeda had no close ties, despite repeated contacts between the two.

• The terrorists who administration officials claimed were links between the two had no direct connection to either Saddam or bin Laden.

• A key meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and one of the leaders of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks probably never happened.

A Knight Ridder review of the Bush administration statements on Iraq’s ties to terrorism and what’s now known about the classified intelligence has found that administration advocates of a pre-emptive invasion frequently hyped sketchy and sometimes false information to help make their case.

The Bush administration has defended its prewar descriptions of Saddam and is calling Iraq “the central front in the war on terrorism,” as Bush said 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 said in January there was “overwhelming evidence” of a relationship between Saddam 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 did not 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.

• 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’d consider the offer, U.S. intelligence officials said. But according to a report later made available to the CIA, bin Laden 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.”
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www.tvnewslies.org/html/al_qaeda_links.html

[GSC Admin]

President Bush said Wednesday that there was no proof tying Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks, amid mounting criticism that senior administration officials have helped lead Americans to believe that Iraq was behind the plot.

Bush's statement was the latest in a flurry of remarks this week by top administration officials after Vice President Dick Cheney resurrected a number of contentious allegations about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th," Bush said in an impromptu session with reporters. He contended, however, that "there's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties."

Bush's comments were his most direct on the issue to date. He drew a clear distinction between alleged Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda and the lack of evidence of Iraqi involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. That is a distinction administration officials did not emphasize in the months before the war. The issue has come to a head amid recent polls showing that most Americans believe — despite the lack of evidence — that Hussein was somehow involved in the attacks.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan stressed Wednesday that Bush administration officials never claimed any Iraq-Sept. 11 link. McClellan's assertion appears to be factually correct, but many administration critics, including some in the intelligence community, said it was also somewhat misleading.

A reading of the record shows that while senior administration officials stopped short of accusing Hussein of complicity in the attacks, they frequently alluded to the possibility of such a connection, and consistently cast the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda in stronger terms than many in the intelligence community seemed to endorse.

Even Bush's remarks Wednesday were challenged by lawmakers and other officials who have reviewed the White House's prewar claims and have access to the underlying U.S. intelligence. Responding to Bush's statement, Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said any alleged ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda "are tenuous at best and not compelling." And while he agreed that administration officials never made an explicit connection between Iraq and Sept. 11, Rockefeller said the White House "led the American public into believing there was a connection in order to build support for the war in Iraq."

The issue, which had been dormant for several months, has been revived in recent days by a number of factors, including a fresh effort by the White House to shore up support for the increasingly costly military and reconstruction efforts in Iraq by casting the operation as a part of the response to Sept. 11. In a speech last week, Bush described Iraq as the "central front" in the war on terrorism, even though few in the counter-terrorism community described it as such before the U.S. invasion.

In his appearance Sunday on "Meet the Press," Cheney vigorously defended every aspect of the war, saying the administration's prewar claims about banned weapons held by Iraq would be proved true. He argued that Iraq was the "heart of the base" of the terrorist threat that culminated on Sept. 11. "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," Cheney said.

The White House has been on the defensive for months over the failure so far to find banned weapons in Iraq, which has fueled criticism that the administration hyped the threat posed by Hussein. Perhaps fearing that Cheney's comments might trigger a new public relations problem, the White House has moved quickly in recent days to clarify its position on Iraq and Sept. 11.

Bush's remarks Wednesday followed nearly identical comments by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday that the administration had no evidence tying Hussein to Sept. 11. National security advisor Condoleezza Rice also spoke on the issue Tuesday, saying on ABC's "Nightline," "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11." Recent administration statements, however, have prompted new questions about whether the White House contributed to and capitalized on public perception that Iraq was involved in the attacks.

Polls over the past year have shown that a persistent, perhaps even growing, majority of Americans believes Hussein was somehow involved. The latest, an August survey by the Washington Post, found that 69% of Americans believed Iraq was "likely" behind the attacks.

Polling experts say the numbers reflect the strong animosity many Americans have felt toward Hussein since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "The American public has always been prepared to think the worst of Saddam Hussein," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "They think he's a dangerous guy, and he comes from the Mideast, where the people who are dedicated to hurting us come from, and [their belief that he was behind Sept. 11] is less conviction than, 'Yeah, probably.' "

Asked whether he believed the administration contributed to that perception, Kohut replied: "Well, they didn't have to hint very much to have Americans draw that inference. I don't know if people were already there [in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11], but they were prepared to go there really quickly."

Though Bush and his top aides did not say directly that Hussein took part in the Sept. 11 attacks, they often combined the two subjects in speeches and interviews leading up to the war. In a key speech in Cincinnati in October, the president said: "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." After Hussein's regime was toppled, Bush reinforced the perception of a link between the two in his May 1 speech aboard an aircraft carrier off San Diego, saying, "We've removed an ally of Al Qaeda."

Critics argue that such juxtapositions encouraged people to tie Hussein to Sept. 11. "It was the close association in the same thought, the same sentence, that led to that incorrect conclusion," said Greg Thielmann, a former senior intelligence official at the State Department who retired last year. "And I think it was done with great skill and deliberation."

The administration also seized on shards of evidence that seemed to suggest Iraqi complicity in the attacks, evidence that has since come into serious question. In perhaps the most important example, Cheney has repeatedly cited the allegation that the ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta, met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague several months before the attacks. "It's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April," Cheney said in an appearance on "Meet the Press" three months after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The CIA says it can find no evidence that such a meeting took place. The FBI says that financial and other records indicate that Atta was in Florida when the meeting allegedly took place. Nor has the account been supported by information from the Iraqi agent, who has been in U.S. custody for several months. "If we had gotten confirmation that there was such a meeting, I think you would know," a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Cheney raised the issue of the meeting again Sunday, saying: "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know." To be sure, there is evidence of some contact between Hussein's government and Al Qaeda. An Al Qaeda affiliate, Abu Musab Zarqawi, operated from Baghdad, where a cell he controlled orchestrated the killing of a U.S. diplomat last year, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Al Qaeda detainees in U.S. custody have told interrogators "that there was some training of Al Qaeda types offered by Iraq, and perhaps received," a U.S. official said. There are also reports of contacts between Iraqi agents and Al Qaeda operatives in Sudan dating back a decade or more. But none of the senior Al Qaeda operatives in custody, including Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, nor any of the senior Iraqi officials being detained, have described significant cooperation between the two, according to intelligence officials. "Nobody has alleged that Al Qaeda was working hand in glove with Iraq," the U.S. official said.

White House Quotes Past and Present
[Compiled by Times researchers Cary Schneider and Joan Wolff. Sources: Facts on File, news reports.]

President Bush

Oct. 14, 2002: "After September the 11th, we've entered into a new era and a new war. This is a man [Hussein] that we know has had connections with Al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use Al Qaeda as a forward army."

Sept. 17, 2003: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties. We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld

Sept. 26, 2002: "Yes, there is a linkage between Al Qaeda and Iraq."

Sept. 16, 2003: "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that" Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice

Sept. 25, 2002: There "have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of Al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time."

Sept. 16, 2003: "And we have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11. What we have said is that this was someone who supported terrorists, helped train them."

[GSC Admin]

Bush rejects Saddam 9/11 link

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

The comments - among his most explicit so far on the issue - come after a recent opinion poll found that nearly 70% of Americans believed the Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks.

Mr Bush did however repeat his belief that the former Iraqi president had ties to al-Qaeda - the group widely regarded as responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington.

Critics of the war on Iraq have accused the US administration of deliberately encouraging public confusion to generate support for military action.

Looking back at what the administration said:

At a time when the credibility of government intelligence and information is under the spotlight, President Bush probably had little choice but to scotch the confusion, says the BBC's Ian Pannell in Washington.

But if the public believes that they were given the wrong impression by the administration, then there may be a political cost involved with the presidential campaign under way, our correspondent says.

Lack of clarity:

"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks," Mr Bush told reporters as he met members of Congress on energy legislation.

Many Americans believe that some of the hijackers were Iraqi - when none were - and that the attacks had been orchestrated by Baghdad, despite any concrete evidence to support that.

This confusion has been partly attributed to, at best a lack of clarity by the administration and at worst, deliberate obfuscation, correspondents say.

As recently as last Sunday, Vice-President Dick Cheney, refused to rule out a link between Iraq and 11 September, saying "'we don't know".

"We will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who've had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

[GSC Admin]

www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/17/Bush.alqaeda/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Thursday said that there were "numerous contacts" between Iraq and the terror network.

Bush, in a brief appearance before reporters, was asked why the administration insists that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had a relationship "when even you have denied any connection between Saddam and September 11, and now the September 11 commission says that there was no collaborative relationship at all?"

The president answered:"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Bush reiterated that the administration never said that "the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. "We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda," he said.

He referred to meetings in Sudan between Iraqi intelligence agents and al Qaeda and said Saddam had connections with organizations considered by the United States to be terror groups -- including Abu Nidal. That group is a spinoff from the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Bush had made stronger statements alleging cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda. In a October 2002 speech, he said, "Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

The initial report from the 9/11 commission, which held a public hearing Wednesday and Thursday, said Osama bin Laden "explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to (Saddam) Hussein's secular regime."

It says the contact was pushed by the Sudanese "to protect their own ties with Iraq." After bin Laden asked for space in Iraq for training camps, the report said, "Iraq apparently never responded."

It also said:"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

"I always said that Saddam Hussein was a threat," Bush said. He was "a threat because he provided safe haven for a terrorist like (Abu Musab al-) Zarqawi, who is still killing innocents inside of Iraq."

[earthmother]

I saw this whole thing on TV today, where Bush was defending himself against what the 9/11 report said. He became very animated and insisted that he'd never said Iraq was behind 9/11, but that there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Someone should make a short film showing all the times he's contradicted himself on this issue. And they accuse the Dems. of flip-flops? I don't think so!