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Report denies Saddam-Al-Qaeda link
I call bullsh*t on this article, but then again what would I know?SADDAM Hussein had no ties with Al-Qaeda or key operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before the Iraq war, a US Senate report said overnight, undercutting pre-invasion claims by the administration of President George W. Bush and igniting a new political row. "Saddam Hussein was distrustful of Al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support," said the report. The assessment, by the Senate Intelligence Committee, also dismissed claims that Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Zarqawi, killed in a US raid on June 7, was harboured by Saddam before the war. Though supporting information that Zarqawi was in Baghdad in 2002, the report said Saddam actually tried to seize the Al-Qaeda kingpin. "Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully to locate and capture Zarqawi, and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi," the report said. The report also said that Saddam had repeatedly rebuffed requests for meetings from Al-Qaeda operatives. In the run-up to the 2003 invasion and for long afterward, senior members of the Bush administration claimed links existed between Iraq and terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda, using such alleged ties as a major justification for the war. On June 14, 2004, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney alluded to the alleged links, which were also debunked by the official independent commission on the September 11 attacks. "In Iraq, Saddam Hussein was in power, overseeing one of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century ... he had long established ties with Al-Qaeda," Cheney said. The report was one of two released Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, both part of a large study of the US rationale for the Iraq war which has been held up by fierce partisan battles. The other report centred on the role of the exiled Iraqi National Congress (INC) in providing intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs which was later discredited. Friday's reports immediately stoked a new outburst of fierce debate over the Bush administration's drive to war with Iraq, ahead of November's crucial congressional elections. "Today's reports show that the administrations 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," said Democratic Senator John (Jay) Rockefeller in a statement. "The administration sought and succeeded in creating the false impression that al-Qaeda and Iraq presented a single unified threat to the United States," he said. But White House spokesman Tony Snow, speaking before the report was released, said it contained "nothing new." "It's, again, kind of re-litigating things that happened three years ago," he said. "The president's stated concern this week, as you've seen, is to think, 'okay, we'll let people quibble over three years ago. The important thing to do is to figure out what you're doing tomorrow and the day after and the month after and the year after to make sure that this war on terror is won."' Posted by: tipper 2006-09-08 |
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