9/11 Panel Denies Al-Qaeda-Iraq Links

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON ­ In a direct challenge to recent assertions by both
President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the special
bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
against New York and the Pentagon has found "no credible evidence" of
any operational link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

While the commission, which has had access to highly classified U.S.
intelligence, said that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had sought
contacts with and support from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
after his expulsion from Sudan in 1994, those appeals were ignored.

Contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda after bin Laden moved to Afghanistan
"do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship,"
according to the commission’s report, which was released Wednesday
morning. It added that two senior al-Qaeda officials now in U.S. custody
"have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq."

The report is the first of a series expected to be released over the
coming months as the commission winds up its work.

Most of it deals with al-Qaeda’s evolution beginning in the 1980s.
Echoing the administration, it warns that "al-Qaeda is actively striving
to attack the United States and inflict mass casualties."

Its conclusion about the absence of any operational link between
al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein not only further undermines the
administration’s case for going to war against Iraq, but also deals a
sharp blow to the already-strained credibility of Cheney, who Monday
asserted without elaboration during a speech to a right-wing institute
in Florida that the Iraqi leader had "long-established ties" to the group.

Cheney insisted as recently as last January that Washington had obtained
"conclusive" evidence that Hussein had biological weapons in the form of
two customized truck trailers that he said was for their production.

The claim, which he has not repeated since, was discredited by, among
others, outgoing Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George
Tenet, as well as the head of the U.S. task force in charge of searching
for alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in Iraq, David Kay.

Asked about Cheney’s most recent remarks at a Tuesday press conference,
Bush declined to answer directly, insisting instead that Hussein had
ties with "terrorist organizations," of which he cited only the late Abu
Nidal, a Palestinian who split from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in
the 1970s and created his own terrorist group.

Bush also suggested that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who is
identified by U.S. officials as a leader of resistance to the U.S.
occupation of Iraq, might also have had ties to Hussein and al-Qaeda.

"Zarqawi is the best evidence of (Hussein’s) connection to al-Qaeda
affiliates and al-Qaeda," Bush said. "He’s the person who’s still killing."

The commission’s conclusion on the absence of ties between Hussein and
al-Qaeda is also certain to further discredit the so-called
neoconservatives both inside and outside the administration who led the
march to war. Many of them were behind what appeared to be an
orchestrated campaign to implicate Hussein in the 9/11 attacks themselves.

Within the administration, the principals appear to have included
Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
Vice President Dick Cheney and his national security adviser, I. Lewis
Libby, among others in key posts in the National Security Council (NSC)
and the State Department.

Outside the administration, key figures included close friends of both
Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, including Richard Perle, former Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief James Woolsey ­ both members of
Rumsfeld’s Defence Policy Board (DPB); Frank Gaffney, head of the
arms-industry-funded Centre for Security Policy; and William Kristol,
editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and chairman of the
Project for the New American Century (PNAC), among others.

A close examination of the public record indicates that all of these
individuals were actively preparing the ground within days, even hours,
after the 9/11 attacks for an eventual strike on Iraq, whether or not it
had any role in the attacks or any connection to al-Qaeda.

A hint of a deliberate campaign to connect Iraq with 9/11 and al-Qaeda
surfaced one year ago in a televised interview of General Wesley Clark
on the popular public-affairs program, Meet the Press. In answer to a
question, Clark asserted, "there was a concerted effort during the fall
of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism
problem on Saddam Hussein."

"It came from the White House, it came from other people around the
White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN,
and I got a call at my home saying, ’you got to say this is connected.
This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam
Hussein.’"

While Clark has not yet identified who called him, Perle, Woolsey,
Gaffney and Kristol were using the same language in their media
appearances on 9/11 and over the following weeks.

"This could not have been done without help of one or more governments,"
Perle told The Washington Post on Sept. 11. "Someone taught these
suicide bombers how to fly large airplanes. I don’t think that can be
done without the assistance of large governments."

While Kristol and company were trying to implicate Hussein in the public
debate, their friends in the administration were pushing hard in the
same direction. Cheney, according to published accounts, had already
confided to friends before Sept. 11 that he hoped the Bush
administration would remove Hussein from power.

But the evidence about Rumsfeld is even more dramatic. According to an
account by veteran CBS newsman David Martin in September 2002, Rumsfeld
was "telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even
though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks" five
hours after an American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon.

Martin attributed his account in part to notes taken at the time by a
Rumsfeld aide. They quote the defense chief asking for the "best info
fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH (Saddam Hussein) at the
same time, not only UBL (Usama bin Laden). The administration should "go
massive ... sweep it all up, things related and not," the notes quote
Rumsfeld as saying.

Wolfowitz shared those views, according to an account of the meeting
Sept. 15-16 of the administration’s war council at Camp David, provided
by the Post’s Bill Woodward and Dan Balz. In the "I-was-there" style for
which Woodward, whose access to powerful officials since his
investigative role in the Watergate scandal almost 30 years ago is
unmatched, is famous:

"Wolfowitz argued (at the meeting) that the real source of all the
trouble and terrorism was probably Hussein. The terrorist attacks of
Sep. 11 created an opportunity to strike. Now, Rumsfeld asked again: ’Is
this the time to attack Iraq?’"

"Powell objected," the Woodward and Balz account continued, citing
Secretary of State Colin Powell’s argument that U.S. allies would not
support a strike on Iraq. "If you get something pinning Sep. 11 on Iraq,
great," Powell is quoted as saying. "But let’s get Afghanistan now. If
we do that, we will have increased our ability to go after Iraq ­ if we
can prove Iraq had a role."

Despite the secretary of state’s reservations, the neocon campaign was
remarkably successful. As recently as eight weeks ago, a survey by the
Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of
Maryland found that 57 percent of the U.S. public believed Iraq was
either "directly involved" in carrying out the 9/11 attacks or had
provided "substantial support" to al-Qaeda. Fifty-two percent said they
believed that concrete evidence of a Hussein-al-Qaeda link had been
uncovered by U.S. investigators since the war.

Retired senior U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials have long
doubted any operational link between al-Qaeda and Hussein, as noted by
former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman, who signed a
statement by former top-ranking diplomats and military officials that
was released here Tuesday, denouncing U.S. policy in Iraq and the Middle
East.

"(Hussein) and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were mortal enemies during
this period," Freeman told reporters, adding that administration
assertions that the two had such links before the war were regarded by
specialists in the region as "ludicrous."

"Why the vice president continues to make that claim beats me," said
another former top diplomat, Ambassador Robert Oakley. "I have no idea."