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Skriven 2009-02-28 06:38:00 av TIM RICHARDSON (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MODERATOR
Ärende: Waterboarding
=====================
On 02-27-09, MODERATOR said to TIM RICHARDSON:


MM>You placed a cite with almost everything *except* where it came from.


MM>People actually check sources out you know.  All you had to do was to
MM>provide the name of magazine or whatever.  Instead....


Its from the Weekly Standard.......which could have been easily determined by
typing the author's name into any decent web search engine.


Here's the rest of it:



Saddam's al Qaeda Connection


From the September 1 / September 8, 2003 issue: The evidence
mounts, but the administration says surprisingly little.


by Stephen F. Hayes


09/01/2003, Volume 008, Issue 48


Page 2 of 2 < Back


To better understand the administration's case on these links, it's important
to examine three elements of this debate: what the administration alleged, the
evidence the administration had but didn't use, and what the
government has learned since the war.


WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION ALLEGED


TOP U.S. OFFICIALS linked Iraq and al Qaeda in newspaper op-eds, on talk
shows, and in speeches. But the most detailed of their allegations came in an
October 7, 2002, letter from CIA director George Tenet to Senate
Intelligence chairman Bob Graham and in Secretary of State Colin Powell's
February 5, 2003, presentation to the United Nations Security Council.


The Tenet letter declassified CIA reporting on weapons of mass destruction and
Iraq's links to al Qaeda. Two sentences on WMD garnered most media attention,
but the intelligence chief's comments on al Qaeda deserved notice. "We have
solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qa'ida going back
a decade," Tenet wrote. "Credible information indicates that Iraq and al
Qa'ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression. Since
Operation Enduring Freedom [in Afghanistan], we have solid evidence of the
presence in Iraq of al Qa'ida members, including some that have been in
Baghdad. We have credible reporting that al Qa'ida leaders sought contacts in
Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated
that Iraq has provided training to al Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons
and gases and making conventional bombs." In sum, the letter said, "Iraq's
increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications
of a relationship with al Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists
will increase, even absent US military actions."


That this assessment came from the CIA--with its history of institutional
skepticism about the links--was significant. CIA analysts had long contended
that Saddam Hussein's secular regime would not collaborate with Islamic
fundamentalists like bin Laden--even though the Baathists had exploited Islam
for years, whenever it suited their purposes. Critics of the administration
insist the CIA was "pressured" by an extensive and aggressive intelligence
operation set up by the Pentagon to find ties where none existed. But the
Pentagon team consisted of two people, at times assisted by two others. Their
assignment was not to collect new intelligence but to evaluate existing
intelligence gathered by the CIA, with particular attention to any
possible Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration. A CIA counterterrorism team was given a
similar task, and while many agency analysts remained skeptical about links,
the counterterrorism experts came away convinced that there had been
cooperation.


For one thing, they cross-referenced old intelligence with new information
provided by high-level al Qaeda detainees. Reports of collaboration grew in
number and specificity. The case grew stronger. Throughout the
summer and fall of 2002, al Qaeda operatives held in Guantanamo corroborated
previously sketchy reports of a series of meetings in Khartoum, Sudan, home to
al Qaeda during the mid-90s. U.S. officials learned more about the activities
of Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi, an al Qaeda WMD specialist sent by bin Laden to seek
WMD training, and possibly weapons, from the Iraqi regime. Intelligence
specialists also heard increasingly detailed reports about meetings in Baghdad
between al Qaeda leaders and Uday Hussein in April 1998, at a birthday
celebration for Saddam.


In December 2002, as the Bush administration prepared its public case for war
with Iraq, White House officials sifted through reams of these intelligence
reports on ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda.


Some of the reporting was solid, some circumstantial. The White House
identified those elements of the reports it wanted to use publicly and asked
the CIA to declassify them. The Agency agreed to declassify some 75 percent
of the requested intelligence.


According to administration sources, Colin Powell, in his presentation before
the U.N. Security Council, usedonly 10 or 15 percent of the newly declassified
material. He relied heavily on the intelligence in Tenet's letter. Press
reports about preparations for the Powell presentation have suggested that
Powell refused to use the abundance of CIA documents because he found them
thin and unpersuasive. This is only half right.


Powell was certainly the most skeptical senior administration official about
Iraq-al Qaeda ties. But several administration officials involved in preparing
his U.N. presentation say that his reluctance to focus on those links had more
to do with the forum for his speech--the Security Council--than with concerns
about the reliability of the information.


Powell's presentation sought to do two things: make a compelling case to the
world, and to the American public, about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein;
and more immediately, win approval for a second U.N. resolution explicitly
authorizing the use of force.


The second of these objectives, these officials say, required Powell to focus
the presentation on Hussein's repeated violations of Security Council
resolutions. (Even in the brief portion of Powell's talk focused on
Iraq-al Qaeda links, he internationalized the case, pointing out that the bin
Laden network had targeted "France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, and
Russia.") Others in the administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney,
favored using more of the declassified information about Hussein's support of
international terrorism and al Qaeda.


Powell spent just 10 minutes of a 90-minute presentation on the "sinister
nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network." He mentioned
intelligence showing that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a known al Qaeda associate
injured in Afghanistan, had traveled to Baghdad for medical treatment. Powell
linked Zarqawi to Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda cell operating in a Kurdish
region "outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq." Powell told the Security
Council that the United States had approached an unnamed "friendly security
service"--Jordan's--"to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi," providing
information and details "that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi." Iraq
did nothing. Finally, Powell asserted that al Qaeda leaders and senior Iraqi
officials had "met at least eight times" since the early 1990s.


These claims, the critics maintain, were "hyped" and "exaggerated."


WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION DIDN'T USE


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."


* On February 13, 2003, the government of the Philippines asked Hisham al
Hussein, the second secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, to leave the
country. According to telephone records obtained by Philippine intelligence,
Hussein had been in frequent contact with two leaders of Abu Sayyaf, an al
Qaeda affiliate in South Asia, immediately before and immediately after they
detonated a bomb in Zamboanga City. That attack killed two Filipinos and an
American Special Forces soldier and injured several others.


Hussein left the Philippines for Iraq after he was "PNG'd"--declared persona
non grata--by the Philippine government and has not been heard from since.
According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, an Abu Sayyaf leader
who planned the attack bragged on television a month after the bombing that
Iraq had contacted him about conducting joint operations.


Philippine intelligence officials were initially skeptical of his boasting,
but after finding the telephone records they believed him.


* No fewer than five high-ranking Czech officials have publicly confirmed that
Mohammed Atta, the lead September 11 hijacker, met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim
al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer working at the Iraqi embassy, in Prague
five months before the hijacking. Media leaks here and in the Czech Republic
have called into question whether Atta was in Prague on the key dates--between
April 4 and April 11, 2001. And several high-ranking administration officials
are


"agnostic" as to whether the meeting took place.


Still, the public position of the Czech government to this day is that it did.


That assertion should be seen in the context of Atta's curious stop-off in
Prague the previous spring, as he traveled to the United States. Atta flew to
Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but did not have a valid visa and was
denied entry. He returned to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork, and took
a bus back to Prague.


One day later, he left for the United States.


Despite the Czech government's confirmation of the Atta-al Ani meeting, the
Bush administration dropped it as evidence of an al Qaeda-Iraq connection in
September 2002. Far from hyping this episode, administration officials
refrained from citing it as the debate over the Iraq war heated up in
Congress, in the country, and at the U.N.


WHAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS LEARNED SINCE THE WAR


THE ADMINISTRATION'S CRITICS, including several of the Democratic presidential
candidates, have alluded to new "evidence" they say confirms Iraq and al Qaeda
had no relationship before the war. They have not shared that
evidence.


Even as the critics withhold the basis for their allegations, evidence on the
other side is piling up.


Ansar al-Islam--the al Qaeda cell formed in June 2001 that operated out of
northern Iraq before the war, notably attacking Kurdish enemies of Saddam--has
stepped up its activities elsewhere in the country. In some cases, say
national security officials, Ansar is joining with remnants of Saddam's regime
to attack Americans and nongovernmental organizations working in Iraq. There
is some reporting, unconfirmed at this point, that the recent bombing of the
U.N. headquarters was the result of a joint operation between Baathists and
Ansar al-Islam.


And there are reports of more direct links between the Iraqi regime and bin
Laden. Farouk Hijazi, former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and Saddam's longtime
outreach agent to Islamic fundamentalists, has been captured.


In his initial interrogations, Hijazi admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda
leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994.


According to administration officials familiar with his questioning, he has
subsequently admitted additional contacts, including a meeting in late 1997.
Hijazi continues to deny that he met with bin Laden on December 21, 1998, to
offer the al Qaeda leader safe haven in Iraq. U.S. officials don't believe his
denial.


For one thing, the meeting was reported in the press at the time. It also fits
a pattern of contacts surrounding Operation Desert Fox, the series of missile
strikes the Clinton administration launched at Iraq beginning December 16,
1998. The bombing ended 70 hours later, on December 19, 1998. Administration
officials now believe Hijazi left for Afghanistan as the bombing ended and
met with bin Laden two days later.


Earlier that year, at another point of increased tension between the United
States and Iraq, Hussein sought to step up contacts with al Qaeda. On February
18, 1998, after the Iraqis repeatedly refused to permit U.N. weapons
inspectors into sensitive sites, President Bill Clinton went to the Pentagon
and delivered a hawkish speech about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and
his links to "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized
international criminals."


Said Clinton: "We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st
century. . . . They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build
arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to
deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear
example of this threat than Saddam Hussein."


The following day, February 19, 1998, according to documents unearthed in
Baghdad after the recent war by journalists Mitch Potter and Inigo Gilmore,
Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo detailing upcoming meetings with a
bin Laden representative traveling to Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had
been covered with Liquid Paper. The memo laid out a plan to step up contacts
between Iraq and al Qaeda. The Mukhabarat, one of Saddam's security forces,
agreed to pay for "all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the
knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral
message from us to bin Laden." The document set as the goal for the meeting a
discussion of "the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to
achieve a direct meeting with him." The al Qaeda representative, the document
went on to suggest, might be "a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."


I emailed Potter, a Jerusalem-based correspondent for the Toronto Star, about
his findings last month. He was circumspect about the meaning of the document.
"So did we find the tip of the iceberg, or the whole iceberg?


Did bin Laden and Saddam agree to disagree and that was the end of it? I still
don't know." Still, he wrote, "I have no doubt that what we found is the real
thing. We plucked it out of a building that had been J-DAMed and was three-
quarters gone. Beyond the pale to think that the CIA or someone else planted
false evidence in such a dangerous location, where only lunatics would bother
to tread. And then to cover over the incriminating name Osama bin Laden with
Liquid Paper, so that only the most stubborn and dogged of translators would
fluke into spotting it?"


Four days after that memo was written, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden and his
deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued a famous fatwa about the plight of Iraq.


Published that day in al Quds al-Arabi, it reads in part:


First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of
Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches,
dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors,
and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight
the neighboring Muslim peoples. . . . The best proof of this is the Americans'
continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a
staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being
used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great
devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance,
and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million . . .
despite all this, the Americans are once again trying to repeat the horrific
massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed
after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.


The Americans, bin Laden says, are working on behalf of Israel.


The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest
neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the
region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and
through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the
continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.


Bin Laden urges his followers to act. "The ruling to kill all Americans and
their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim
who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do
it."


It was around this time, U.S. officials say, that Hussein paid the $300,000 to
bin Laden's deputy, Zawahiri.


ACCORDING TO U.S. officials, soldiers in Iraq have discovered additional
documentary evidence like the memo Potter found. This despite the fact that
there is no team on the ground assigned to track down these contacts--no
equivalent to the Iraq Survey Group looking for evidence of Saddam's weapons
of mass destruction.


Interviews with detained senior Iraqi intelligence officials are rounding out
the picture.


The Bush administration has thus far chosen to keep the results of its postwar
findings to itself; much of the information presented here comes from public
sources.


The administration, spooked by the media feeding frenzy surrounding yellowcake
from Niger, is exercising extreme caution in rolling out the growing evidence
of collaboration between al Qaeda and Baathist Iraq. As the critics continue
their assault on a prewar "pattern of deception," the administration remains
silent.


This impulse is understandable. It is also dangerous. Some administration
officials argue privately that the case for linkage is so devastating that
when they eventually unveil it, the critics will be embarrassed and their
arguments will collapse. But to rely on this assumption is to run a terrible
risk. Already, the absence of linkage is the conventional wisdom in many
quarters. Once "everybody knows" that Saddam and bin Laden had nothing to do
with each other, it becomes extremely difficult for any release of information
by the U.S. government to change people's minds.


Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly
Standard.





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