As we noted a couple of months ago, the IG report was something of a joke. It criticized a Defense Department operation run by Undersecretary Douglas Feith for disagreeing with the CIA and the DIA on the significance of intelligence data on the connections between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. Given what we know now about the CIA's performance in relation to Iraq, one would think that rethinking that agency's approach to such an important topic would be applauded. But no--the IG thought it was "improper" for a group within the Defense Department to dissent from the CIA's dogmatic interpretations of the evidence.
Further, the IG's report has already been an embarrassment to the Post. In February, the Post quoted from Carl Levin's press release about the report, which was much more critical of Feith's group than the report itself, and attributed Levin's quotes to the Inspector General. This gaffe led to a correction by the newspaper and an email from Post reporter Stephen Smith, which we reproduced here, in which Smith called his own paper's reporting an "egregious error," but said he had "nothing to do with" it.
One would think that Smith and the Post, having been burned on this story once already, would be careful to get their facts right the second time around. No such luck. Here is the first paragraph of Smith's story in yesterday's Post:
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.To read this, one would think that the Post is actually reporting new information on this long-contentious subject. In fact, the IG's report contains no news on the subject at all, and the IG made no attempt to figure out who--the CIA or Feith's Defense Department group--was right. The statements in the IG's report that lead the Post's coverage come from a single footnote; worse, the Post didn't even report that footnote correctly. Here is what the footnote says:
Noteworthy is that post-war debriefs of Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz, al-Tikriti and al-Libi as well as document exploitation by DIA all confirmed that the Intelligence Community was correct: Iraq and al-Qaeda did not cooperate in all categories. The terms the Intelligence Community used to describe the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda were validated, "no conclusive signs," and "direct cooperation...has not been established."Put aside, for a moment, the fatuity of assuming that Saddam and his henchmen can be relied on to describe their regime's relationship with al Qaeda truthfully, and note how the Post misrepresented the content of the footnote. The footnote doesn't say that Iraq and al Qaeda were not cooperating before th U.S. invasion, as the Post erroneously reported; it says that "direct cooperation...has not been established," an entirely different proposition. Further, the IG's footnote says that al Qaeda and Iraq "did not cooperate in all categories." This refers to a slide in a presentation prepared by Feith's group which says that al Qaeda and Iraq cooperated across "all categories," of which ten were listed, e.g., training and financing. So, far from saying that there was no cooperation at all, the IG footnote said that the two entities didn't cooperate "in all [ten] categories."
Further, by extracting (and misreporting) that single footnote, the Post misrepresents the overall tenor of prewar intelligence, as set forth in the IG's report. Far from flatly stating that al Qaeda and Iraq didn't collaborate, the CIA and DIA expressed doubt and agnosticism about the extent of such cooperation. Here are some quotes from those agencies' reports, as set forth by the IG:
"Compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and al Qaeda has not been established, despite a large body of anecdotal information."While some of those phrases actually made it into the Post's account, the overall tenor of the article would lead all but the most careful readers to think that pre-war intelligence estimates flatly rejected the possibility of cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda. This false impression is accentuated by the Post's effort to suggest that the IG's report contradicts Vice President Dick Cheney's statements on the same subjects:
"Overall, the reporting provides no conclusive signs of cooperation on specific terrorist operations, so discussion of the possible extent of cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda is necessarily speculative."
As far as knowledge or implication in 9/11 goes, the [CIA's August 20, 2002] report offers, "no conclusive indication of Iraqi complicity or foreknowledge in the 11 September attacks." Further, the report cites "no conclusive reporting that al Qaeda and Iraq collaborated on terrorist operations...."
The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.So what is "alleged" about this history? Zarqawi indisputably ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and fled that country in late 2001 as the Taliban's regime crumbled. No one denies that he went from Afghanistan to Iraq and set up terrorist operations there. We know that, among other operations, he engineered the assassination of American diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan, while in Iraq prior to our invasion of that country. It is similarly beyond dispute that Zarqawi headed the "al Qaeda in Iraq" organization until his death last year. So how, exactly, has the IG report turned Cheney's narrative into "alleged history"? If you read to the very last paragraph of the Post piece, you find this:"This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told Limbaugh's listeners about Zarqawi, who he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."
Zarqawi, whom Cheney depicted yesterday as an agent of al-Qaeda in Iraq before the war, was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts. He publicly allied himself with al-Qaeda in early 2004, after the U.S. invasion.Given the Post's notorious fondness for anonymous sources, we don't know who these "intelligence analysts" who apparently speak with such confidence about Zarqawi's murky career might be. But how about a source who isn't afraid to be named, Sayf al Adl, al Qaeda's global security chief? Here is what he wrote about Zarqawi:
"Al-Zarqawi: The Second Al-Qaeda Generation," a recently published book on Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi -- who pledged his group's loyalty to Osama bin Laden last year -- chronicles al-Zarqawi's presence in Afghanistan and his relationship with the Al-Qaeda network, which funded al-Zarqawi training camps in Herat before the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Following the invasion, al-Zarqawi and other Al-Qaeda leaders scattered and regrouped in Iran, pledging to reassemble in Afghanistan in seven years' time, Sayf al-Adl, the official in charge of security for the Global Al-Qaeda of Islam Army, recounted in the book.Al-Adl's account is, obviously, fully supportive of Cheney's characterization of Zarqawi's role. Beyond that, this whole dispute turns on very fine distinctions. No one questions that Zarqawi worked with Ansar al-Islam, which is generally described as an al Qaeda "affiliate." What, exactly, does that mean? Terrorists have no need of clear rules or sharp lines between organizations. At the end of the day, it matters very little whether Zarqawi (or any other terrorist) was a "member" of al Qaeda or "merely" someone who communicated and cooperated with al Qaeda in pursuit of shared goals.Al-Adl further documented al-Zarqawi's decision to establish his network of fighters in Iraq in 2001, an undertaking assisted through his relationship with the Ansar Al-Islam terrorist network based in Iraqi Kurdistan close to the Iranian border. That relationship was reportedly forged in Afghanistan.
"We began to converge on Iran one after the other. The fraternal brothers in the peninsula of the Arabs, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates who were outside Afghanistan, had already arrived. They possessed abundant funds. We set up a central leadership and working groups," al-Adl recounted. "We began to form some groups of fighters to return to Afghanistan to carry out well-prepared missions there. Meanwhile, we began to examine the situation of the group and the fraternal brothers to pick new places for them. Abu Mus'ab and his Jordanian and Palestinian comrades opted to go to Iraq...[an] examination of the situation indicated that the Americans would inevitably make a mistake and invade Iraq sooner or later. Such an invasion would aim at overthrowing the regime. Therefore, we should play an important role in the confrontation and resistance. It would be our historic chance to establish the state of Islam that would play a major role in alleviating injustice and establishing justice in this world," al-Adl said.
And, by the way, none of this has much to do with the IG report, which never mentions Zarqawi. It's just the occasion for more drive-by defamation of Dick Cheney.
The fact is that the extent of pre-war communication and collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda is still unknown. We know for sure that Saddam harbored terrorists and supported terrorist groups; what we don't know for sure the answer to a much less important question: to what extent did that support involve terrorists who were specifically linked to al Qaeda? Someday we may have definitive answers to that question. In the meantime, neither the IG report nor the Post's reporting adds an iota of information to our knowledge of the issue.
Reader Comments ( Page 2 of 2)
16. In Washington, the FBI moved to quiet the Prague connection by telling journalists that it had car rentals and records that put Atta in Virginia Beach, Va., and Florida close to, if not during, the period when he was supposed to be in Prague. The New York Times, citing information provided by "federal law enforcement officials," reported that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 2, 2001, and by April 11, "Atta was back in Florida, renting a car." Newsweek reported that, "the FBI pointed out Atta was traveling at the time [in early April 2001] between Florida and Virginia Beach, Va.," adding, "The bureau had his rental car and hotel receipts." And intelligence expert James Bamford, after quoting FBI Director Robert Mueller as saying that the FBI "ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on," reported in USA Today, "The records revealed that Atta was in Virginia Beach during the time he supposedly met the Iraqi in Prague."
All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license. His international license was at his father's home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April). Nor were there other records in the hands of the FBI that put Atta in the United States at the time. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2002, "It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias" to "meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague." Clearly, it was not beyond the capabilities of the 9/11 hijackers to use aliases.
But just because Atta could have been in Prague did not mean that he met al-Ani there on April 8, 2001. Eyewitness identification can often be mistaken. It was known, however, that Atta had business in Prague prior to the 9/11 attack. Kmonicek, the deputy foreign minister, had found a paper trail of passport records showing that Atta had applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic on May 26, 2000 in Bonn, Germany. Atta must have had business there, since he could have transited through the Czech Republic on Czech Air without a visa.
http://www.slate.com/id/2091354/
t at 5:57PM on Apr 7th 2007
17. Regarding comment 1.
Can you give a citation for somebody in the Bush administration claiming that Hussein had a role in 9.11 and using that as a rationale for invading Iraq? I think you're making that up.
commocean at 9:25PM on Apr 7th 2007
18. tom gassett,
When our troops were stationed just outside Iraq and inspectors were eyeing Iraq's supposed stock-piles, we had answered the question we all cared about, "Does Saddam have WMD's?" Why follow that with "Shock and Awe" instead of continued invasive inspections? Wouldn't that have been better than this war? Or is that a question about minutiae?
If the "...only operational connection ever made by the US government..." was made by Clinton before 9-11, then why do almost all Republicans, TO THIS DAY, insist that Saddam was responsible for 9-11? Was it the libs who tricked them into thinking this? Conservatives must be unbelievably gullible.
lil_turk at 8:46PM on Apr 7th 2007
19. commocean,
I didn't say the Bush administration claimed that Saddam was involved with 9-11. I said he said directly that Saddam was not. Nevertheless, when Republicans are polled (especially FOX viewers) almost all claim that Saddam was.
This has been polled many times and the people who get it wrong in the greatest numbers (besides FOX viewers) are the troops, who almost all claim Saddam was involved with 9-11. Do they deserve to know the truth, or is it best for them that they fight on believing Saddam pulled off 9-11?
To answer your question, the Bush administration didn't need to make direct claims, but said things like this instead:
BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060821.html
(ctrl+f "hornet's")
Now, with the whole Bush administration constantly putting 9-11 and Iraq in the same sentence, it's not surprising so many people made the wrong link, but when are Republicans going to figure this out? It's four years later! Time to get off the short bus!
lil_turk at 2:32AM on Apr 8th 2007
20. cdor,
This is from a few seconds on the Google.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/102.php?nid=&id=&pnt=102&lb=brus
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=544
You don't get Google?
lil_turk at 6:34PM on Apr 8th 2007
21. cdor,
Here's a really pertinent one from 9-5-06. http://www.zogby.com/News/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1169
This is shortly after the president stated that Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11...on FOX news of all places. So why are Republicans still confused?
So I perused the 32 Google responses to "bush august 21 2006 site:foxnews.com" to see what they had to say about Saddam, 9-11, and the president.
Only one referenced the press conference: http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Aug21/0,4670,Bush,00.html
Did it mention 9-11 and Saddam? Of course not! But, besides Lebanon, it mentioned: Plan B, gas prices, and North Korea.
I wonder if the Bush administration knows how confused their base is? Maybe they don't read polls. Maybe people are confused by columns like Hinderaker's.
Later,
lil_turk at 9:29PM on Apr 8th 2007
22. I think one needs to account for probably a huge partisan distortion when viewing any polls that relate to support of the "party line". The party line for the Republicans was/is pretty much Saddam suspect, Saddam very bad, Saddam should be taken out, and the party line for the Democrats was/is Saddam a bad guy, but not bad enough to be taken out, and certainly secular Saddam wouldn't collaborate with the Islamic al Qaeda.
I haven't really done any research on this, but I suspect you'd find the same party line bias in polls (if there were any) that asked questions during previous administrations.
For example, even after it was pretty clear that Clinton was lying about Monica, wouldn't one expect to find polls of Democrats still denying it, perhaps instinctively wanting to support their president, and not wanting to contribute to what would in effect be public opinion against him?
In other words, people lie to pollsters, and they also lie to themselves.
I imagine that polls of Democrats would find heavy support for the idea that there was widespread genocide in Kosovo ordered by Milosevic himself, when in fact the reality appears to be much different:
http://tinyurl.com/35aeb9
If the tables were turned, if Al Gore had been President on 9/11, and he had decided to invade Iraq based on actually the prevailing view in the press during the Clinton Admin. that there was a budding relationship between Saddam and OBL, wouldn't one expect that the numbers would be reversed?
rtsp://63.66.59.40/mrc/binladen061704.rm
(RealPlayer required)
I would suggest not being so quick to label one side or another ignorant or uninformed, when in fact the reality of the situation may have much more to do with natural human emotion and loyalties common to everyone.
Actually, I think it's kind of silly to exclude a connection from the realm of strong possibility. This is something that surely Saddam would have taken great care to erase all evidence of. He fooled us, and his own generals and indeed the whole world on WMD, after all.
But, this may be merely partisan emotion talking. :-)
Gary at 1:57AM on Apr 9th 2007
23. Gary,
The effect to which you're referring is sometimes called "defensive polling" and undoubtedly leads to distortions regarding Iraq. But the numbers show more than this. Twenty to thirty percent of
Democrats continue to say that Saddam was involved with 9-11 and we HATE Cheney. There's no way defensive polling leads to those numbers.
So why are even (D)'s so wrong about this still? How about because ... the Bush administration has been lying about Iraq? How about because Bush sees these poll results and says, "Sweet, got 'em again"?
I don't actually believe (R)'s are stupider than (D)'s, but when are you people going to sort this out? Bush, etc. tricked us and you guys can't even keep from lying about it during polls. If you're best friend sold you a bum house, I'm sure you'd quit going fishing with him (or whatever) but Bush sold us a bum trillion dollar occupation that he didn't bother to prepare for and you guys still act like he's your best friend.
MWR,
lil_turk at 3:26AM on Apr 9th 2007
24. OK well in addition to defensive polling, could it be that perhaps a lot of people are/were not prone to giving Saddam the benefit of the doubt, as you seem to be turk?
There was report after report in the late 90's describing how bin Laden and Saddam were trying to, and in fact most likely would, hook up. There is the fact that Saddam was at this time beginning to adopt the format of radical Islam, including changing his flag. There was the fact that he had once attempted to have the first Bush assasinated, and was obviously thought of as enemy number one in the minds of the average American. He cheered the attack on 9/11, while the rest of world leaders expressed sympathy.
Could it be that the 20-30% of Democrats who believe there was some connection are simply overcoming their partisanship and using common sense, and are rightfully and understandably not willing to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt?
I think you're expecting everyone to have read the rather misleading headlines in the New York Times, and to blindly agree with it 100%. People aren't basing their answers solely on conventional media and govt. wisdom, but also on instinct and common sense. If someone asks you did Saddam have a hand in 9/11 yes or no?, then I think that it's perfectly understandable and reasonable that they'd choose an absolute yes over an absolute no, even if it's simply an obscure way of poking a stick in Saddam's evil eye.
But then again, you do have a point in that Bush & co. certainly didn't go out of their way at every speaking engagement to point out specifically, before going any further, that Saddam most certainly didn't have anything to do with 9/11. But besides the fact that they didn't necessarily firmly believe this to be true, their intention was to implement what they felt was the proper course of action, which was to change the regime in Iraq, not to make every possible disclaimer like some scared lawyer.
Clinton, at least in retrospect, could no doubt be characterized as overselling Iraq's nuclear ambitions when he sought to justify with the country his bombing of Iraq, and could he also have oversold the Saddam/bin Laden connection when explaining the bombing of the chemical factory in the Sudan? I'm not a fan of Clinton to be sure, but I don't blame him for perhaps erring NOT on the side of Saddam Hussein.
People rely on many things other than the common consensus in the media when answering poll questions. Sometime they're right, sometimes wrong. I, for example, instinctively and I thought common sensibly, wrongly assumed that you thought (R)s are stupider than (D)s, based on your earlier comments:
"when are Republicans going to figure this out? It's four years later! Time to get off the short bus!"
"This is square one. It's impossible to have a real conversation about Iraq with people who won't get past this square."
"Was it the libs who tricked them into thinking this? Conservatives must be unbelievably gullible."
Gary at 4:09PM on Apr 9th 2007
25. Gary,
I gave Saddam no "benefit of the doubt." I rejoiced when Saddam capitulated because he allowed us to invade his country with a bunch of nosy, aggressive scientists and high-caliber nerds. Because of our military threats. Somehow, we found no WMD's even though our govt. insisted it knew the location of said WMD's. Who kicked the inspectors out of Iraq in '03?
The statement, "Saddam have a hand in 9/11 yes or no?, then I think that it's perfectly understandable and reasonable that they'd choose an absolute yes over an absolute no," is not reasonable. It makes you sound like you don't believe in an objective reality. If someone asked me "Did Cheney plan 9-11?" and I said "Yes" because I think he's a terrible person, then you'd call me an unreasonable liar and you'd be right.
I stand by the square-one statement. Cheney has two more years to worsen Iraq and start wars with Iran, Syria, and (?). But we can't have that conversation because the (R) worldview is so partisan and fantastical that they can't accept that they were conned. There's no way to have a real conversation about Iraq with somebody who lies constantly to himself and everyone else about how we got there. I retract any references to low (R) I.Q. as they are a cheap way to get responses.
Later,
lil_turk at 6:20PM on Apr 9th 2007
26. "I retract any references to low (R) I.Q."
I'll accept that for now. You are suspended for two weeks, after which time it will be decided whether or not your posting privileges will be revoked.
;-)
Gary at 1:19PM on Apr 10th 2007
27. Is it mere coincidence that the FIRST al Qaeda attack onthe WTC - in 1993, on WJ Clinton's watch - occured on the anniversary of the surrende of Saddam to the USA in the Gulf War?
Is it coincidence that Saddam and al Qaeda both wanted to topple the House of Saud and get rid of the USA troops in their kingdom?
No and no.
Saddam and al Qaeda cooperated whenever they had common goals and to the extent that they felt safe in doing so.
And they could have coopereated more and to a far more dangerous degree if the accomodationists had had their way and removed sanctions from Iraq.
These were the two options which exosited in 2002: remove sanctions or dethrone Saddam.
After 9/11 onlyu one was tolerable.
At least toi those whose primary mission was the defense of the USa and the Free World.
Partisan, left-wing Dems now - retrospectively - feel differently.
But at the time they overwhelmingly agreed.
In retropsect, it was the right thing to do based on what we knew at the time.
No amount of hand-wringing, finger-pointing,or arm-twisting will ever change that.
Nor will putting one's head in the sand remove the same type of threat in the future.
o'danny boy at 1:15PM on Apr 13th 2007