Posted on 09/09/2006 4:22:45 AM PDT by indyreb
Saddam Hussein rejected overtures from al-Qaida and believed Islamic extremists were a threat to his regime, a reverse portrait of an Iraq allied with Osama bin Laden painted by the Bush White House, a Senate panel has found.
The administration's version was based in part on intelligence that White House officials knew was flawed, according to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing newly declassified documents released by the panel.
The report, released Friday, discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.
As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, President Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with Zarqawi."
Democrats singled out CIA Director George Tenet, saying that during a private meeting in July Tenet told the panel that the White House pressured him and that he agreed to back up the administration's case for war despite his own agents' doubts about the intelligence it was based on.
"Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to 'say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said,'" Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters Friday.
Tenet also told the committee that complying had been "the wrong thing to do," according to Levin.
"Well, it was much more than that," Levin said. "It was a shocking abdication of a CIA director's duty not to act as a shill for any administration or its policy."
Leaders of both parties accused each other of seeking political gain on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Republicans said the document contained little new information about prewar intelligence or postwar findings on Iraq's weapons and connection to terrorist groups.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., accused Democrats of trying to "use the committee ... insisting that they were deliberately duped into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime."
"That is simply not true," Roberts added, "and I believe the American people are smart enough to recognize election-year politicking when they see it."
The report speaks for itself, Democrats said.
The administration "exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe — contrary to the intelligence assessments at the time — that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attacks," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.
Still, Democrats were reluctant to say how the administration officials involved should be called to account.
Asked whether the wrongdoing amounted to criminal conduct, Levin and Rockefeller declined to answer. Rockefeller said later he did not believe Bush should be impeached over the matter.
According to the report, postwar findings indicate that Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime." It quotes an FBI report from June 2004 in which former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said in an interview that "Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden."
Saddam himself is quoted in an FBI summary as acknowledging that the Iraqi government had met with bin Laden but denying that he had colluded with the al-Qaida leader. Claiming that Iraq opposed only U.S. policies, Saddam said that "if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the U.S., he would have allied with North Korea or China," the report quotes the FBI document.
The Democrats said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the day Bush gave a speech speaking of that link, the CIA had sent a declassified letter to the committee saying it would be an "extreme step" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in attacking the United States.
Levin and Rockefeller said Tenet in July acknowledged to the committee that subsequently issuing a statement that there was no inconsistency between the president's speech and the CIA viewpoint had been a mistake.
They also charged Bush with continuing to cite faulty intelligence in his argument for war as recently as last month.
The report said that al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader killed by a U.S. airstrike last June, was in Baghdad from May 2002 until late November 2002. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."
In June 2004, Bush also defended Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida," the president said.
The report concludes that postwar findings do not support a 2002 intelligence community report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or ever developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents.
A second part of the report finds that false information from the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam group led by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi, was used to support key intelligence community assessments on Iraq.
This report gave all the benefit of the doubt to terrorists and Saddam.
I hate Democrats.
The senate couldn't find their way out of a wet paper sack. You have to be a DUmpster diver to swallow the new LIE OF THE WEEK.
Would appreciate you sharing technique used to "educate" wife ;-)
'Morning Raster!
they are both socialists and they are into graft
A really stupid analogy, some freepers are just morons, sorry. A more apt analogy would be one of proving, in a court of law, that OJ did it, vs knowing he did it. Hows that?
http://www.marsearthconnection.com/okc.html
This link stuck out for some strange reason..../s
You said it all.
Why does this happen? The 800 FBI Files?
Um no, because they already know the truth, that is, that they ALL had access to the same prewar intelligence, and that the vast majority of them agreed. Now, in order to try to change history, they want to try and make it seem as if somehow the Whitehouse "fooled" them. Of course they think they can get away with it, because the vast majority of Americans are unaware of the process.
The other thing they are trying to do is to retro-actively change the paramaters of the debate. Politics is played by whores, but in this case, some are more whorish than others, and usually, thats the minority party.
I wonder why../s
The first anthrax cases turned up within a few miles of the temporary residences of the 9-11 hijackers, and you assume also that there is a 100% probability that the 9/11 hijackers were involved in the anthrax attacks. The odds against any other scenario are astronomical.
Wikipedia (the well known online encyclopedia) notes that Atta was living in Coral Springs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Atta
just prior to 9/11:
"On April 11, Atta and al-Shehhi rented an apartment in Coral Springs, Florida, and assisted with the arrival of the muscle hijackers. On April 16 Atta was given a citation for not having a valid driver's license, and began steps to get one."
and the first anthrax cases turned up at a newspaper office in Boca Raton (also a Wikipedia timeline):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Media
American Media's corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, figured prominently in news headlines in late 2001, after an anthrax attack was perpetrated on the company. Since then the corporate headquarters have moved to New York City at 1 Park Avenue in Manhattan.
and Coral Springs and Boca Raton are ten or twelve miles distant from eachother".
What are the odds?
The Czechs have resolutely stuck with their story of Atta meeting with one of Hussein's spymasters just prior to 9-11, and Hussein had an anthrax program which was more sophisticated than either the United States or Russia did.
http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html
The only three plausible sources for the anthrax which the hijackers used were the United States, Russia, and Iraq. Iraq had the most advanced anthrax program of the three, is a muslim nation, and was run by people who would look favorably upon Atta's mission. The United States and Russia are Christian nations, had less advanced anthrax programs, and in 2001 were both run by people who at the very least, would not be expected to smile and shake Atta's hand upon hearing of such a plan.
Which of the three do you think is most likely? I mean, do you really need to be Albert Einstein to figure this **** out???
The government knows this and refuses to talk about it since they don't want anybody to think that we were attacked and couldn't do anything about it for two years because Slick KKKlintler had sold our entire military arsenal off for DNC money and we had to build munitions for two years.
A friend of mine tried to order a barrel for a target rifle in the spring of 02 and was told that barrel makers like Krieger and Lilja didn't have time for any sort of civilian firearm **** since they were working 24/7 making machinegun barrels. An army has to have warehouses full of machinegun barrels, and we didn't have any. The cupboard was bare.
Iraq had us on pins & needles throughout the 90s. Imagine if Hussein was still in power 5 years after 9/11. This country would be even more divided than it is today.
Since the Repubs control the Senate, some RINO RATS must have backed this.
WHO are they?
I can't believe how the Dems paint themselves as fools, dupes,morons, all suckered by the stupidest President ever to sit in the Oval Office. I saw Oliver North and Peter King on Cavuto discussing this. North had a document found after the fall of Baghdad written by Iraqi intelligence to Saddam discussing their meeting with Bin Laden (he said Al Queda leader). It didn't mention 9-11 but just showed the connection in general. The Dems of course would question its validity, inferring I guess, that either Saddam's intelligence officer was lying to him or maybe Bush planted it.
I relish the election to see the look on Chris Mathews face when the Dems get handed their asses again.
The same thing happened with the B.S.-9/11 "Bi-Partisan" Report
Anytime you hear the Hezbocrats saying "bi-paritsan support", it means it's a whitewash and sellout to FBI Files extortion or some sort of arm-twisting. If it weren't for Senators like Jeff Sessions and a couple others, the plain facts would never see the light of day.....
Move along, nothing new here. The 'Pubbies have been letting "Dingy Harry" Reid drive the ship all along. They need to grow a set of nads and put Reid and his ilk in their place. It shouldn't be that difficult, given the level of intelligence they are dealing with from the left.....
Think of Iraq and Afghanistan as bases from which to attack Iran, as necessary (both meanings).
"What is truth?" said jesting Pilote, and did not wait for an answer.
The Senate couldn't find it's ass with both hands and a flashlight.
Intelligence isn't about confirming a negative. It's about proving what you can with corroboratable evidence. There's no way we could factually prove that there was no link between anyone. All you can do is show what is visible, and evaluate how strong the information is that shows it.
The number of links was extensive....and they are now well known. The Republicans in the Senate are idiots to let the dems control this kind of report.
The reason you're not going to see Republicans, any Republicans, take up this banner and run with it is because the links are low to mid level, at best, and not particularly damning.
Links between Saddam and UBL/AQ senior leadership would be significant. Links between mid-to-low level AQ guys and mid-to-low level intelligence officers is as common as sand in the Middle East. Tyrants like to know what's going on in their domain, and don't really care who their agents associate with to find out. (Unlike our CIA, who is severely restricted in talking to unsavory individuals). Terrorists aren't above having contacts in local governments either. It helps cut down on 'misunderstandings'.
Biased and pointless as this report may be, the Republicans don't have the ammo to challenge the basic claim, and they're not going to try. I'm sorry to be the bearer of unwelcome news, but that's how it is. It doesn't make Saddam or UBL any less deserving of swift and lethal justice.
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