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| Senator Rockefeller and the Saddam-al-Qaeda Connection |
| 2006-09-12 |
| Rule 1 in politics: test presumed facts, before you plead them as such. Sen. Jay Rockefeller sent out a press release Friday as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report on pre-war Iraqi intelligence. According to the press statement, the intelligence committee found "that the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq was fundamentally misleading." As senators never use a one-syllable word when they can use a three- or four-syllable word, that's Senate-ese for: Bush lied. The thing is, if you read the "Accuracy Report" -- as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., calls it -- then you see that, if the Bushies were wrong to read too much into intelligence reports that suggested Saddam Hussein had WMD and links with al-Qaida, Bush haters are wrong to argue that there was no reason to think those links existed. News stories dutifully reported that the intelligence committee found that Hussein did not harbor al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and that Hussein had no known organizational ties to al-Qaida. It also found that some intelligence sources were complete frauds. But the committee also noted that before the war in Iraq began, the CIA reported learning from credible sources of "at least eight direct meetings between senior Iraqi representatives and top al-Qaida operatives." In 2004, the Iraq Survey Group -- the group that reported that there were no WMD in Iraq -- found a document that showed, in 1992, Iraqi intelligence wanted to establish ties with bin Laden. A top Iraqi intelligence official met with bin Laden in Sudan in 1995, although the report found that Hussein later directed the official not to give bin Laden the office, land mines and military training bin Laden sought -- which the West Virginian Democrat noted. The press release did not report on a document on the bin Laden meeting found by the Iraq Survey Group that stated that Hussein wanted to "leave the door open to further develop the relationship and cooperation between both sides." |
| Posted by:Snease Shaiting3550 |
| #1 Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Saddam's quisling, sent out a press release Friday as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report on pre-war Iraqi intelligence. According to the press statement, the intelligence committee found "that the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq was fundamentally misleading." What WMD? No WMD in Iraq! They've all been moved to Syria. Ask the eye doctor. |
| Posted by: BigEd 2006-09-12 18:32 |