Truemors
“Bin Laden is also bitterly opposed to the corrupt and repressive regimes of the region, which he regards as "un-Islamic," including the Saudi Arabian regime, the most extreme Islamic fundamentalist regime in the world…”
Noam Chomsky Sept. 18th 2001
This is a response to fellow NowPublic member joellerose’s recent article that asserts there were convincing connections between Osama bin-Laden’s Al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein prior to the 911 attacks on the United States. The reporter points to a PDF report from the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, NY that alleges, (according to the reporter involved) to detail a connection between the two disparate entities that apparently the Bush administration’s own hand-picked 911 commission, United Nations chemical weapons investigators and the entirety of the “Coalition of the Willing” missed when they proclaimed officially that there never existed any such link.
In fact, President Bush himself has told the national press that there were no direct links but “believed” that Saddam Hussein had made such ideological contacts and “supported” Osama bin-Laden’s gang of CIA-trained killers. [i] He was followed by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Sept 15th when it was announced that the U.S. intelligence community knew as far back as 2002 that there were no ties between the two groups. [ii]
The CIA found out by September 2002 with assistance from a contact deep within the Iraqi government's inner circle that Iraq had no history or involvement the Saudi national Osama bin Laden and that Hussein viewed Bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda an enemy of the Iraqi government and therefore subject to retaliation. As anyone with a rudimentary familiarity with Islam would know that the secular Hussein was a blood-enemy of fundamentalist Bin-Laden purely on a theological basis. For Hussein, it was a matter of protecting his political power in Western Asia from religious fanatics hell-bent on destroying any political order that does not use The Qur’an as a basis.
First off, there were no ideological connections between the two since by the nature of the conflict; Saddam’s Western-styled secularism automatically made him a target of Al Quida and Bin-Laden himself said publicly that once the Iraq people eject the Americans and the “Coalition of the Willing,” they should then kill Hussein and establish a true Islamic state that recognises Sharia, or Islamic law as the state paradigm. Basically an strict fundamentalist Islamic theocracy, exactly just the opposite example that existed in Iraq prior to the U.S. and British instigated sectarian civil war.
The report went on to say that it was bin-Laden that investigated potential collaboration with Iraq while operating within the Sudan in 1996, and another highlight stating that Iraq never replied to a request for aid from Al-Qaeda earlier in 1994. The commission also quoted reports of contacts between Iraqi and Al-Qaeda operatives while bin-Laden was in Afghanistan circa 1996 finding that, "they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior bin-Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."[iii]
Not only were there no links, but international intelligence noted that Pakistan, a US ally in the “War against Terrorism,” supported bin-Laden and gave him haven. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on June 17, 2004 that:
“Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties exist between al-Qaeda and Iraq," the report said. "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States."
The report also said that Pakistan broke with Afghanistan's Taliban regime only after September 11, even though it knew the Taliban was hiding bin Laden.
"The Taliban's ability to provide bin Laden a haven in the face of international pressure and UN sanctions was significantly facilitated by Pakistani support," the report said.
"Pakistan benefited from the Taliban-al-Qaeda relationship, as bin Laden's camps trained and equipped fighters for Pakistan's ongoing struggle with India over Kashmir.”
While president Bush and the Rove public relations machine were habitually linking Hussein to Al-Qaeda, the CIA's own intelligence supporting contrary facts and views was either kept from the Bush administration or deliberately ignored as was the initial report from the FBI to the then national security adviser, Condi Rice than the United States will definitely be attacked by Islamic terrorists using commercial airliners.
This is where former CIA Director George J. Tenet comes in. He claims now, after years of silence on the subject, that the Bush administration was never interested in anything other than invading Iraq and going forward with their agenda, oil and all.
As the Associate Press writer Pete Yost detailed on Tenet’s resignation, "Tenet had been under fire for months in connection with intelligence failures related to the U.S.-led war against Iraq, specifically assertions the United States made about Saddam Hussein's purported possession of weapons of mass destruction, and with respect to the threat from the al-Qaida terrorist network…In May, a panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks released statements harshly criticizing the CIA for failing to fully appreciate the threat posed by al-Qaida before the terrorist hijackings. Tenet told the panel the intelligence-gathering flaws exposed by the attacks will take five years to correct…”[iv]
His new book "At the Center of the Storm," Tenet says that the Bush administration used him as a scapegoat after inquiries about pre-war intelligence began to increase in intensity revealing that there "was never a serious debate" about whether the nation should go to war with Iraq.
I personally remember him being quoted on CNN saying that there were no WmD’s to speak of in Iraq and that Al-Qaeda was more of a threat than Iraq had the foreseeable potential to be. So does Blogger Juan Cole of Informed Comment:
“Tenet should have resigned when Bush insisted on trumpeting an Iraqi nuclear weapons program at a time when Tenet was denying there was any such thing. (Tenet did think Iraq had chemical and biological programs, about which he was wrong). The nuclear claim helped convince the country to go to war. It was false. Tenet knew it was false. He told Bush that. Bush either knew it was false and said it anyway, or he disbelieved Tenet. Either thing should have produced Tenet's resignation.” [v]
As many NowPublic readers will remember, The Decider, American president George W. Bush repeatedly linked Saddam Hussein to Islamic terrorism and clearly stated that Iraq was directly behind 911. Following the sobering report from the Commission that there was is no material evidence that neither the Iraqi government, nor its possible operatives were involved in the attacks, Bush was forced to admit that no such connections existed.
White House spokesman Tony Snow told the Associated Press news agency the report contained "nothing new." However the spin began minutes after the public release of the report. White House spokespersons then said that they never categorically linked Iraq to 911 but instead asserted that they really meant Iraq was linked to Al-Qaeda and by default, linked to 911 since of course, they funded and gave “safe haven” to Al-Qaeda.
This new lie to spin the old lie has served the neo-cons in their quest to blame everyone but those directly involved. As expected, former president Bill Clinton was blamed for asserting such a link before well before 911 as well as not “getting” bin-Laden when he had the chance. Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times stated empathically: “The Clinton administration talked about firm evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network years before President Bush made the same statements…The issue arose again this month after the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States reported there was no "collaborative relationship" between the old Iraqi regime and bin Laden.[vi]
Employing semantic jujutsu, the neo-conservative punditry has continued to search for substantiated evidence to buttress the reasons the Bush administration presented for invading and monopolising that nation’s oil reserves. Every “connection” the neo-conservatives have presented has fallen due to either shoddy intelligence gathering or outright fraudulent material concocted to misinform the American and world public.
Britain too has contributed to the lie by buttressing the American case of war by making connections between Iraq and bin-Laden on non-existent or falsified evidence. Writing for the UK Telegraph, Inigo Gilmore wrote:
Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in Baghdad by The Telegraph have provided the first evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's regime…Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998…The documents show that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al-Qa'eda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia. The meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad.
This flies in the face of American intelligence and intensive investigation, (when the Bush White House was willing to cooperate with the commission) after the facts that said just the other thing. It happened again in 2006 when Rick Santorum, former Senator from Pennsylvania made a big parade when he declared that American forces discovered illegal WmD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in Iraq. Santorum and other republicans hailed this “find” as justification for their backing the invasion of Iraq despite the fact that no WmD’s were found in the areas Bush, Cheney and Secretaries of State Powell and Rice said they would be. Under pressure from the American and global public, war-hawk neo-conservatives searched for and went public what they considered a convincing case for “staying the course.”
The incredible facts behind this do more to undermine American support for its elected leaders than to buttress the Bush administration’s reasons for going into colonialist wars. The munitions Santorum referenced were in fact that out-of-date chemical weapons given to the Iraqi government during the CIA sponsored Iran-Iraqi war in the 1980s. Neo-conservative commentators skipped mentioning that item of interest and the fact that U.S. Army officials at the Pentagon, the CIA, the Department of Defense, and even the White House all to a man unequivocally quashed the issue by publicly refuting Santorum’s news that these expired weapons were part of the cache United Nations and U.S. Army inspectors were searching for. Santorum’s mea maxima culpa fell flat on its face since by fiat, not only were the weapons casings located quite outdated, but they were at no time considered to be components of the “imminent threat” Bush sold the U.S. public with following the 911 attacks.
In other words, Santorum was a con artist and a willing one at that. Then-Senator Santorum's declaration it turns out was like Secretary Powell’s famous theatre of lies at the United Nations. While General Powell used a university student’s thesis found on the internet, Santorum’s “evidence” was based primarily on very brief declassified sections of a U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command classified report. Small amounts of this report were declassified under pressure from the media and the synopsis of the report spoke of “possible weapons caches” other than those already accounted for by either U.N. inspectors or U.S. Army personnel immediately following the invasion. And as we all know, they never, ever, found anything.
It happened again in 2007 when the Bush administration accused Iran of supplying “material support” to the Iraqi resistance movement. It turned out that the IED’s “proving” a link between Iran and Iraqi terrorists were actually American-made munitions and not manufactured in Iran. In fact, even the printed instructions were in English.[vii]
This is telling in that when one looks at how bin-Laden, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and even Saddam Hussein in large part are direct errors in judgement by U.S. intelligence agencies and their White House policymakers blinded by American might. Nearly everything the U.S. has done in Western Asia has come back in some form or another in righteous retribution for this nation’s international misdeeds.
As the late Jerry Falwell used to say, “You reap what you sow.” Political professor Robert Pape points out that "al-Qaeda's transnational suicide terrorists have come overwhelmingly from America's closest allies in the Muslim world and not at all from the Muslim regimes that the U.S. State Department considers 'state sponsors of terrorism'.[viii] Pape also takes note that so far, no al-Qaeda suicide attackers have come from Iraq. Until now, that is.
This brings us back to joellerose’s article on The Ogaden File: Operation Holding (Al-Msk). The paper seems to provide a detailed diary of activities of a cadre of Al-Qaeda in North Africa preparing to provide logistics and training to supporters on the continent.
For one thing, the document says absolutely nothing about Iraq or Saddam Hussein. He’s never mentioned, yet the reporter asserts that the document, assuming it is not fraudulent, is important because it links a date that he says Iraq was planning operations as well. His source, the right-wing internet-based Cyber News Service (CNS) reported via FOX News (need I say more?) on June 26, 2006 as if there was irrefutable proof that Iraq was working with Al-Qaeda and the Afghanistan Taliban. As the reader can attest above, such claims are not only inaccurate but outdated. The Bush administration has moved on to brand new lies.
His sources CNS and FOX are both shills for the right-wing and parrot whatever the White House deems appropriate for their “base” to know. The average American Joe doesn’t have the will or time after a full day of labour to research the over-simplified talking points presented to an already over-emotionalised and explosively reactive conservative public. However, journalists, independent or not are responsible for taking the time to research what we choose to write on. That is the law of our chosen craft, paid or not.
The Bush administration has been found guilty of creating propaganda to justify policy. The Downing Street Memorandum is just one example. The recent lies about Iran from supplying Al-Qaeda to forcing Jews to wear ethnic-insignia armbands ala Nazi Germany[ix] have been proven to be patently false. And there is no reason not to presume that this new, previously unseen “connection thesis” is grounded in anything other than wishful thinking by the Bush administration and those who truly feel they gain something tangible from United States global hegemony.
So in effect, this new revelation is as Tony Snow would say is “Nothing new.” It is simply the Bush administration aided by their ideological ditto-heads seeking innovative ways to save American republican face in the midst of a glass White House paranoid of an oncoming brick hailed by an American public they have for too long taken for granted.
- The Angryindian
[i] BBC News Sept. 9th 2006; (Saddam 'had no link to al-Qaeda')
[ii] Washington Post- September 15, 2006; Page A14; (CIA Learned in '02 That Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties, Report Says)
[iii] Washington Post, June 17, 2004; Page A01; (Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed)
[iv] SOURCEWATCH - AP, June 3, 2004
[v] Informed Comment - 6/03/2004 02:49:08 PM 0 comments
[vi] Rowan Scarborough, (Clinton first linked al Qaeda to Saddam) The Washington Times, 2004
[vii]Tuesday, January 16, 2007 by Inter Press Service Bush's New Iran Policy - No Evidence for IED Charge
[viii] Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, p. 114
[ix] Robert Fisk: Journalists Are Under Attack for Telling the Truth
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