http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...20030713/ap_on
_re_mi_ea/bush_iraq_al_qaida

Ex-Officials Dispute Iraq Tie to al-Qaida
Sun Jul 13, 7:55 AM ET

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - As President Bush (news - web sites) works to quiet a
controversy over his discredited claim of Iraqi uranium shopping in Africa,
another of his prewar assertions is coming under fire: the alleged link
between Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime and al-Qaida.

Before the war, Bush and members of his cabinet said Saddam was harboring
top al-Qaida operatives and suggested Iraq (news - web sites) could slip the
terrorist network chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. Now, two
former Bush administration intelligence officials say the evidence linking
Saddam to the group responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was never
more than sketchy at best.


"There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the
al-Qaida terrorist operation," former State Department intelligence official
Greg Thielmann said this week.


Intelligence agencies agreed on the "lack of a meaningful connection to
al-Qaida" and said so to the White House and Congress, said Thielmann, who
left State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research last September.


Another former Bush administration intelligence official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, agreed there was no clear link between Saddam and
al-Qaida.


"The relationships that were plotted were episodic, not continuous," the
former official said.


Critics attacked the Bush administration assertions from the beginning for
being counter to the ideologies of Saddam and al-Qaida and short on
corroborating evidence.


A United Nations (news - web sites) terrorism committee says it has no
evidence - other than Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites)'s
assertions in his Feb. 5 U.N. speech - of any ties between al-Qaida and
Iraq.


And U.S. officials say American forces searching in Iraq have found no
significant evidence tying Saddam's regime with Osama bin Laden (news - web
sites)'s terrorist network.


"One of the things that concerns me is the continued reference to the war in
Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. There's not much evidence to support
that linkage," said Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, the top Democrat on the
Senate Intelligence Committee and a presidential candidate.


In the weeks and months before the war, Bush and administration officials
repeatedly said Saddam had ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups which
could provide a pathway for weapons of mass destruction to find their way to
terrorists. U.S. forces have not found any chemical, biological or nuclear
weapons in Iraq so far.


"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by
people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids (news - web sites) and
protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida," Bush said in his
January State of the Union speech.


"Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden
weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own," Bush said.


At the time, many terrorism experts criticized the claim. They noted that
Saddam's secular regime was just the kind of Arab government bin Laden's
Islamic extremists want to replace. Critics also pointed out the lack of
hard evidence of links between Saddam and bin Laden.


The administration's case apparently was persuasive. In a poll conducted
last month by Knowledge Networks, 52 percent of those questioned said they
thought the United States found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam was
working closely with al-Qaida - although no such evidence has been found.


"You see the polls - lots of Americans believe that there was a link between
Iraq and al-Qaida despite the lack of intelligence evidence on that score,"
said Gregory Treverton, a former chairman of the National Intelligence
Council under President Clinton (news - web sites).


The administration's key evidence of a link was an operative named Abu Musab
Zarqawi, who got medical care in Baghdad in May 2002 after being wounded in
Afghanistan (news - web sites). In his Feb. 5 presentation to the United
Nations, Powell called Zarqawi "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin
Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants."





Current and former intelligence officials now say Zarqawi's links to
al-Qaida are more tenuous - the CIA (news - web sites) now says Zarqawi
considers himself independent of al-Qaida, for example. And while Zarqawi
spent time in Iraq, it's unclear whether Saddam's regime simply allowed him
to be there or actively tried to work with him.

"There was scant evidence there had been any other contacts between Saddam
Hussein and Osama bin Laden," Graham said in an interview Friday.

U.S. officials say a handful of suspected al-Qaida members have been
captured in Iraq, but most are probably low-level operatives. The biggest
catch was a man described as a midlevel terrorist operative who worked for
Zarqawi, who was nabbed in April near Baghdad.

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said last week it's
still unclear how much support Zarqawi and his followers got from Saddam.

"That he (Saddam) was promoting al-Qaida is absurd," Cannistraro said. "That
there was a tolerance for a Zarqawi network in Iraq seems clear."

High-level captives from both al-Qaida and Saddam's regime also have denied
any links between the two, U.S. officials say. They say al-Qaida leaders
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubayda denied their network worked with the
former Iraqi government.

Farouk Hijazi, a former Iraqi intelligence operative who U.S. officials
allege met with al-Qaida operatives and perhaps bin Laden himself in the
1990s, also has denied any Iraq-al-Qaida ties, officials say.



--
--
FAIR USE NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am
making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of
environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and
social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any
such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." - GW Bush 12/18/2000.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

"Feels Good!"
---George W. Bush on the Brink of Declaring War on Iraq.