al Qaeda And Saddam
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Foreign Policy, History, The War On TerrorismMore evidence showing little to no ties between the two.
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides “all confirmed” that Hussein’s regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community’s prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February. [...]
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who requested the report’s declassification, said in a written statement that the complete text demonstrates more fully why the inspector general concluded that a key Pentagon office — run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith — had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.
The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith’s office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney’s chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was “mature” and “symbiotic,” marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.
Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.
And yet Cheney still asserts there were strong ties…
The report’s release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq “before we ever launched” the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.“This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq,” Cheney told Limbaugh’s listeners about Zarqawi, who he said had “led the charge for Iraq.” Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would “play right into the hands of al-Qaeda.”
Oh well.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2007 and is filed under Foreign Policy, History, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 6th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Here’s a guess. Cheney’s mind is gone. He really believes it. Can you impeach a VP for dementia?
April 7th, 2007 at 12:03 am
What do you think? Do you suppose Saddam wanted to cooperate with a Shia fundamentalist terror group which would then be in a stronger position to rebel against his own rule? Sorry. Saddam may have been a madman, but he wasn’t stupid.
April 7th, 2007 at 12:04 am
The US version of Baghdad Bob?
April 7th, 2007 at 9:58 am
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