Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations
The Senate report discussed the possibility of Saddam offering al-Qaeda training and safe haven, but confirmed the CIA's conclusion that there was no evidence of operational cooperation between the two.
Vice President Dick Cheney said during a Meet the Press appearance on December 9, 2001, that Iraq was harboring Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
"[24] The Office of the Director of National Intelligence looked at the documents and said that "amateur translators won't find any major surprises, such as proof Hussein hid stockpiles of chemical weapons.
[30] A minority (Democratic) staff report by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform said that "in 125 separate appearances, they [Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice] made ... 61 misleading statements about Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Osama bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia by sending mujahideen from Afghanistan to repel Saddam's forces.
"[38] Saddam abolished sharia courts in Iraq, cracked down on Islamist movements (responding with mass executions and torture when he felt threatened by them), promoted Western ideals of society and law, and usually retained secular Sunnis, Shias and Christians in his government.
Although Saddam was not involved in the September 11 attacks, members of his government had contacts with al-Qaeda; however, the links are not considered by experts and analysts as convincing evidence of a collaborative, operational relationship.
Former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke writes, The simple fact is that lots of people, particularly in the Middle East, pass along many rumors and they end up being recorded and filed by U.S. intelligence agencies in raw reports.
"[47] Former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell Lawrence B. Wilkerson said, "[A]s the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May 2002—well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion—its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.
Many of the claims of collaboration seem to have originated with associates of the Iraqi National Congress, whose credibility has been questioned and who have been accused of manipulating evidence to lure the United States into war on false pretenses.
"[52] Former DIA Middle East section head W. Patrick Lang told the Washington Post that the Weekly Standard article, which published Feith's memo, "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship.
"[54] In November 2001, a month after the September 11 attacks, Mubarak al-Duri was contacted by Sudanese intelligence services who told him that the FBI had sent Jack Cloonan and several other agents to speak with a number of people known to have ties to bin Laden.
According to terrorism analyst Evan Kohlman, "While there have been a number of promising intelligence leads hinting at possible meetings between al-Qaeda members and elements of the former Baghdad regime, nothing has been yet shown demonstrating that these potential contacts were historically any more significant than the same level of communication maintained between Osama bin Laden and ruling elements in a number of Iraq's Persian Gulf neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Qatar, and Kuwait.
The CIA released an August 2004 report which concluded that there was "no conclusive evidence that the regime harbored Osama bin Laden associate Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
Karen DeYoung wrote, "A year after the invasion, the [CIA] acknowledged that the information had come from a single source who had been branded a liar by U.S. intelligence officials long before Powell's presentation.
"[71] Daniel Benjamin, who headed the United States National Security Council's counterterrorism division, led a 1998 exercise to analyze the CIA's contention that Iraq and al-Qaeda would not collaborate.
044–02 in February 2002 (the existence of which was revealed on 9 December 2005 by Doug Jehl in the New York Times), which impugned the credibility of information obtained from captured al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.
The most disturbing aspect of the relationship is the dozen or so reports of varying reliability mentioning the involvement of Iraq or Iraqi nationals in al-Qa'ida's efforts to obtain CBW training.
National Security Council spokesperson Michele Davis told Newsweek that it was impossible to determine whether dissent from the DIA and questions by the CIA were seen by officials at the White House before the president spoke.
According to the BBC, the report "says al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden views Iraq's ruling Ba'ath party as running contrary to his religion, calling it an 'apostate regime'.
The BBC reported that former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that intelligence indicated that the Iraqi regime appeared to be allowing a permissive environment "in which al-Qaeda is able to operate ...
[1][90] W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of Defense Intelligence Agency, called the Feith memo "a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship.
"[89] Carnegie Endowment for International Peace scholars Joseph Cirincione, Jessica Tuchman Mathews and George Perkovich published their study, WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications, in January 2004.
The assessment had been requested by the Office of the Vice President, which asked the CIA to reexamine the possibility that Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi constituted a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda (as Colin Powell had said in his speech to the United Nations Security Council).
The official told Knight Ridder, "What is indisputable is that Zarqawi was operating out of Baghdad and was involved in a lot of bad activities"; the report did not conclude, however, that Saddam's regime had provided "aid, comfort and succor" to al-Zarqawi.
[104] The reports concluded, according to David Stout of The New York Times, that "there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had prewar ties to Al Qaeda and one of the terror organization's most notorious members, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"[100] Senator John Rockefeller, the committee's ranking Democrat, said: "Today's reports show that the administration's repeated allegations of a past, present and future relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq were wrong and intended to exploit the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks.
"[107] The Pentagon's inspector general issued a February 2007 report[108] which found that the actions of Feith's Office of Special Plans, the source of most misleading intelligence about al-Qaeda and Iraq, were inappropriate but not illegal.
Committee chair John D. Rockefeller IV wrote in an addendum to the report, "Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false premises.
"[115] The minority senators did not take issue with the majority's conclusion that there was no evidence of a Saddam-al-Qaeda conspiracy, but objected to the manner in which the report was assembled and called the finished product "a waste of Committee time and resources.
