Saddam's al Qaeda Connection mountains of evidence!
Investigator | 15.05.2004 09:26 | London
Contrary to the claims of its critics, the Bush administration has consistently underplayed the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Evidence of these links existed before the war. In making its public case against the Iraq regime, the Bush administration used only a fraction of the intelligence it had accumulated documenting such collaboration.
The intelligence has, in most cases, gotten stronger since the end of the war. And through interrogations of high-ranking Iraqi officials, documents from the regime, and further interrogation of al Qaeda detainees, a clearer picture of the links between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein is emerging.
IF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION had been out to hype the threat from an al Qaeda-Saddam link, it stands to reason that it would have used every shred of incriminating evidence at its disposal. Instead, the administration was restrained in its use of available intelligence. What the Bush administration left out is in some ways as revealing as what it included.
* Iraqi defectors had been saying for years that Saddam's regime trained "non-Iraqi Arab terrorists" at a camp in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. U.N. inspectors had confirmed the camp's existence, including the presence of a Boeing 707. Defectors say the plane was used to train hijackers; the Iraqi regime said it was used in counterterrorism training. Sabah Khodada, a captain in the Iraqi Army, worked at Salman Pak. In October 2001, he told PBS's "Frontline" about what went on there. "Training is majorly on terrorism. They would be trained on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism. . . . All this training is directly toward attacking American targets, and American interests."
But the Bush administration said little about Salman Pak as it demonstrated links between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to administration sources, some detainees who provided credible evidence of other links between Iraq and al Qaeda, including training in terrorism and WMD, insist they have no knowledge of Salman Pak. Khodada, the Iraqi army captain, also professed ignorance of whether the trainees were members of al Qaeda. "Nobody came and told us, 'This is al Qaeda people,'" he explained, "but I know there were some Saudis, there were some Afghanis. There were some other people from other countries getting trained."
Full story is here:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/033jgqyi.asp
IF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION had been out to hype the threat from an al Qaeda-Saddam link, it stands to reason that it would have used every shred of incriminating evidence at its disposal. Instead, the administration was restrained in its use of available intelligence. What the Bush administration left out is in some ways as revealing as what it included.
* Iraqi defectors had been saying for years that Saddam's regime trained "non-Iraqi Arab terrorists" at a camp in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. U.N. inspectors had confirmed the camp's existence, including the presence of a Boeing 707. Defectors say the plane was used to train hijackers; the Iraqi regime said it was used in counterterrorism training. Sabah Khodada, a captain in the Iraqi Army, worked at Salman Pak. In October 2001, he told PBS's "Frontline" about what went on there. "Training is majorly on terrorism. They would be trained on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism. . . . All this training is directly toward attacking American targets, and American interests."
But the Bush administration said little about Salman Pak as it demonstrated links between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to administration sources, some detainees who provided credible evidence of other links between Iraq and al Qaeda, including training in terrorism and WMD, insist they have no knowledge of Salman Pak. Khodada, the Iraqi army captain, also professed ignorance of whether the trainees were members of al Qaeda. "Nobody came and told us, 'This is al Qaeda people,'" he explained, "but I know there were some Saudis, there were some Afghanis. There were some other people from other countries getting trained."
Full story is here:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/033jgqyi.asp
Investigator
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Sources
15.05.2004 10:13
"The Weekly Standard... is is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It is viewed as a leading outlet of the influential neoconservative movement.
"The Standard has long been a passionate advocate for Israel. Recently, it has become known for its ardent support for war on Iraq.
ekes
The lies in this article were debunked last year
15.05.2004 17:12
Quoting from:
The "New Yorker" magazine's investigative reporter Seymour Hersh points to evidence suggesting that neoconservatives manipulated intelligence about Iraq. Unnamed Bush administration officials allege that Wolfowitz and Shulsky, among other neoconservatives, teamed up to shape U.S. foreign policy by disseminating information based on the intelligence of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an anti-Hussein exile group, and selective intelligence from other agencies. Furthermore, Wolfowitz personally knew INC head Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi's connections soon included other administration neoconservatives, including Cheney underling Lewis Libby.
Wolfowitz purportedly devised an operation for the newly created Office of Special Plans, headed by fellow Strauss disciple Shulsky. According to Hersh's unnamed Pentagon source, when the C1A was unable to find unassailable evidence that Hussein continued to possess weapons of mass destruction or ever had ties to al-Qaeda, the Special Plans operation took it upon itself to find the "overlooked" evidence Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were sure existed. In other words, the purpose of Shulsky's office was to make the case for war by any means necessary.
This is problematic for an overarching reason: major foreign intelligence initiatives are supposed to fall under the CIA's jurisdiction. Given the Office of Special Plans' ideology and its primary source of information--the politically motivated INC--it isn't surprising that the office concluded that war with Iraq was necessary. Hersh reports, however, that the CIA's intelligence frequently contradicted that of the Office of Special Plans.
Shortly after 9/11, the INC furiously disseminated stories of Iraqi dissidents chiming a Hussein connection to al-Qaeda. One dissident, Sabah Khodada (the man quoted in the article above), claimed he saw a commercial jet parked in a terrorist training camp near Baghdad, Iraq. The CIA flatly rejected the claim. The location in question was actually a counter-terrorism training camp; during the Iran-Iraq war it had provided counter-terrorism training to the Iraqi military to help it thwart pro-Iranian airplane hijackings. Another dissident who the Pentagon claimed had trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Iraq told CIA officials he had never done such a thing--he had trained at a nonterrorist Fedayeen camp.
Claims that Hussein continued to possess weapons of mass destruction were similarly discredited; the now-murdered defector Hussein Kamal, formerly a general in the Iraqi army, admitted Hussein had produced weapons of mass destruction, but Chalabi's neoconservative allies neglected to mention that he also said they were destroyed after the 1991 Gulf War. An anonymous ex-intelligence official told Hersh, "One of the reasons I left was my sense that they [the neoconservatives in the Pentagon] were using the intelligence from the CIA and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn't like the intelligence they were getting .... They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason with .... Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God."
But neoconservatives aren't necessarily religious; they simply believe in religion's utilitarian value. "The whole story is complicated by Strauss's idea--actually Plato's--that philosophers need to tell noble lies not only to the people at large but also to powerful politicians," says New York University law professor Stephen Holmes.
(end quote)
spanner
Mmmmm...
15.05.2004 17:19
DIVERSITY OF NEWS COVERAGE IS VERBOTEN!
Indymedia UK... leading 'bottom of the trough' news source for hate filled fantasists, anti-semites, the paranoid, the peace 'i.e. love dictatorship or die' movement, Arab fascists and violent racists. PROTECT ISLAMIC PROPERTY RIGHTS! KILL ALL KAFIRS!
freedom of the press
Poor old Neoconvicts
15.05.2004 18:57
Never mind, they've still got the highly credible, high-circulation "Weekly Standard" though. That'll get their message out for sure.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!
David