Will Bush critics correct themselves about Iraq and Al Qaeda?

[igloo]

July 23, 2004, 8:35 a.m.

Boogie to Baghdad

What the 9/11 Commission says about Iraq and al Qaeda.

The publication of the September 11 Commission report may force a reassessment of the now-conventional wisdom about the links — or, as critics of the Bush administration contend, the absence of links — between Iraq and al Qaeda.

After the commission's last hearing, in mid-June, the Washington Post published a front-page story headlined "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link is Dismissed." The New York Times ran a page-one story — topped by a four-column headline — called "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie." Both reports strongly suggested that Vice President Dick Cheney had been wrong when he said on many occasions that there were extensive links between Iraq and al Qaeda.

The reporting, and the commentary that followed, so angered Cheney that he said, on June 18, "What the New York Times did today was outrageous. The fact of the matter is, the evidence [of an Iraq-al Qaeda link] is overwhelming." Further coverage and commentary criticized Cheney for stubbornly sticking to his position.

Both the Times and the Post based their reporting on a single paragraph, written by the staff of the September 11 Commission, which conceded a few ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda but said there was no "collaborative relationship" between the two. The findings, revealed in the commission's last hearing on June 17, were preliminary, and the apparent rush by some in the press to deny any Iraq-al Qaeda relationship left commission vice-chairman Lee Hamilton baffled. "I must say I have trouble understanding the flack over this," Hamilton told reporters. "The Vice President is saying, I think, that there were connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. We don't disagree with that. So it seems to me the sharp differences that the press has drawn, the media has drawn, are not that apparent to me."

Now, with the release of the commission's final report, it is clear what Hamilton and Cheney were talking about. The final report details a much more extensive set of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda than the earlier staff statement. It also modifies the original "no collaborative relationship" description, now saying there was "no collaborative operational relationship" (emphasis added) between Iraq and Al Qaeda. And it suggests a significant amount of contact and communication between the regime of Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden.

The report describes a time in 1996 when bin Laden, newly arrived in Afghanistan, could not be sure "that the Taliban would be his best bet as an ally." In 1997, the report says, bin Laden began making his Taliban sponsors nervous with a number of flamboyant and militant statements. At the time it seemed possible that bin Laden, who had gone to Afghanistan after being forced out of Sudan, might find himself at odds with his new hosts. What then? The report says bin Laden appears to have reached out to Saddam Hussein:

There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response. According to one report, Saddam Hussein's efforts at this time to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other Middle Eastern regimes led him to stay clear of Bin Ladin.

Since Saddam wasn't interested, the report says, nothing came of the contacts. But by the next year, Saddam, struggling under increasing pressure from the United States, appeared to have changed his mind, and there were more talks:

In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative. In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis. In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December.

The meetings went on, the report says, until Iraq offered to formalize its relationship with al Qaeda:

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States.

The report goes on to say that the September 11 investigators found "no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship." It also says that the commission did not find any "evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."

Nevertheless, top U.S. officials were so worried about the possibility of an Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration that they took care not to provoke bin Laden into a closer relationship with Saddam. In February 1999, for example, the CIA proposed U-2 aerial-surveillance missions over Afghanistan. The report says that Richard Clarke, then the White House counterterrorism chief, worried that the mission might spook bin Laden into leaving Afghanistan for somewhere where it might be even more difficult for American forces to reach him:

Clarke was nervous about such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for someplace less accessible. He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin's having met with Iraqi officials, who "may have offered him asylum." Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his network would be at Saddam Hussein's service, and it would be "virtually impossible" to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke declared.

National-security adviser Sandy Berger suggested that the U.S. send just one U-2 flight, but the report says Clarke worried that even then, Pakistan's intelligence service would warn bin Laden that the U.S. was preparing for a bombing campaign. "Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad," Clarke wrote in a February 11, 1999 e-mail to Berger. The report says that another National Security Council staffer also warned that "Saddam Hussein wanted bin Laden in Baghdad."

The details found in the report — which in footnotes are attributed to a variety of secret U.S government intelligence documents — suggest a new way of thinking about Iraq and al Qaeda. Bin Laden had been forced out of Sudan and into Afghanistan. When it appeared he might have trouble with the Taliban, he looked to Iraq as a possible source of assistance. Iraq, at the time interested in closer ties with the Saudis, said no. Later, as his troubles with the United States grew, Saddam reconsidered, and offered bin Laden a safe haven in Iraq. This time, bin Laden turned Saddam down, not because of any conflicts with Iraq but because he thought he had a better deal in Afghanistan.

With that background in mind, the reasoning employed by American policymakers in early 2002 as they planned the next step in the war on terrorism, comes into clearer focus. The U.S. had toppled the Taliban but had not caught bin Laden and some of his top aides. Without a friendly regime in Afghanistan to protect al Qaeda, where might bin Laden and his band of terrorists go next? One possibility — a quite reasonable possibility — would be a place that had offered them haven in the past: Iraq.

Almost none of this information was included in the preliminary staff report, and thus was not part of the reporting last month that proclaimed no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Because of that absence of information, in late June and early July, the idea that there was no Iraq-al Qaeda link became the conventional wisdom in the press, and that thinking has guided virtually all subsequent reporting. On June 20, for example, the Post ran another front-page story on the topic, this one headlined, "9/11 Panel's Findings Vault Bush Credibility To Campaign Forefront." Later, the paper ran yet another page-one piece headlined "As Rationales For War Erode, Issue of Blame Looms Large."

[igloo]

Yes, There Is a Connection

The 9/11 Commission confirms Iraq-al Qaeda ties.

by Daniel McKivergan

07/22/2004

With the release of the September 11 Commission report, some media outlets may ignore or mischaracterize the fact that the report offers more confirmation of Iraq-al Qaeda ties. It is especially noteworthy, however, that the previous staff report's finding of no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda has been significantly modified. While the commission found no evidence of a "collaborative operational relationship" for "carrying out attacks against the United States," they did find that the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda to be more extensive than many critics of the administration have been willing to admit. And, as the CIA's Counterterrorism Center previously remarked: "any indication of a relationship between these two hostile elements could carry great dangers to the United States."

According to the September 11 report:

* With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Laden himself met with senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Laden is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request . . . [but] the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections. (p.61)

* In March 1998, after Bin Laden's public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Laden. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these

meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Laden's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis. (p.66)

* Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Laden or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Laden a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Laden declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States. (p.66)

In addition, two other recent accounts have shed more light on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection. A June 25, 2004 New York Times article, "Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says," reported on the contents of a mid-1990s Iraqi intelligence document believed to be authentic. According to the article,

* bin Laden "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative."

* the Iraqi regime agreed to bin Laden's request to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda.

* bin Laden "requested joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. had a strong troop presence in Saudi Arabia at the time.

* following bin Laden's departure from Sudan, Iraq intelligence began "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship."

* the Iraqi Intelligence service believed "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."

* a Sudanese official in 1994 told Uday Hussein and the director of Iraqi Intelligence that bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan.

And, on July 7, 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee reported:

* That George Tenet provided the Senate Intelligence Committee this assessment in a closed session on September 17, 2002: "There is evidence that Iraq provided al Qaeda with various kinds of training--combat, bomb-making, [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] CBRN. Although Saddam did not endorse al Qaeda's overall agenda and was suspicious of Islamist movements in general, he was apparently not averse, under certain circumstances, to enhancing bin Laden's operational capabilities. As with much of the information on the overall relationship, details on training are [redacted] from sources of varying reliability."

* That according to a CIA report called Iraqi Support for Terrorism, "the general pattern that emerges is one of al Qaeda's enduring interest in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) expertise from Iraq."

* That the Iraqi regime 'certainly' had knowledge that Abu Musab al Zarqawi -- described in Iraqi Support for Terrorism as "a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner" -- was operating in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

[igloo]

Just Friends

Exclusive: What tomorrow's 9/11 Commission final report will say about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection.

by Stephen F. Hayes

07/21/2004

THE FINAL REPORT of the September 11 Commission, to be released tomorrow, cites many examples of "friendly contacts" between Iraq and al Qaeda, while concluding that those contacts do not appear to have resulted in a "collaborative operational relationship" for "carrying out attacks against the United States," according to sources familiar with the commission's work. The findings in the final report appear to differ from last month's Staff Statement No. 15 in several important respects.

The staff statement, which declared simply that Iraq-al Qaeda contacts did not appear to have resulted in a "collaborative relationship," led several leading news outlets to suggest that the report contradicted Bush administration claims about the relationship. On June 17, 2004, a front-page Washington Post headline declared "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Dismissed." The New York Times weighed in with similar headline that same day: "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie." Times reporters Philip Shenon and Christopher Marquis reported that the staff statement "sharply contradicted one of President Bush's central justifications for war."

Almost immediately, several commissioners offered public statements qualifying the staff report. Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat from Indiana, put it this way:

What we have said is just what [Republican co-chairman Tom Kean] just said: We don't have any evidence of a cooperative or collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda with regard to the attacks on the United States. So it seems to me that the sharp differences that the press has drawn are not that apparent to me.

Hamilton was half right. The

press did overstate the findings in the staff statement. But in casting doubt on a "collaborative relationship," the staff statement did appear to contradict statements from the Bush administration and the intelligence community. Former CIA Director George Tenet, for example, testified repeatedly about intelligence reporting suggesting Iraq provided training and safe haven to al Qaeda.

The final, unanimous report from the commission paints a more complicated picture of the Iraq-al Qaeda connection than last month's staff statement. The report describes repeated "friendly contacts" between followers of Osama bin Laden and the former Iraqi regime. It also qualifies the finding of no "collaborative relationship"--claiming only that there was no "collaborative operational relationship" for "carrying out attacks against the United States."

While some of those "friendly contacts" have been reported previously, others have not. The report says that bin Laden approached Iraq on more than one occasion in the mid-1990s seeking cooperation. In the late 1990s, as the U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq grew more contentious, the courtship reversed itself, with Saddam Hussein's regime reaching out to al Qaeda. By 1999, according to the report, Iraqi outreach included an offer of safe haven in Iraq for Osama bin Laden. Thus, in March of 1998, according to the report, two al Qaeda leaders visited Baghdad for meetings with Iraqi intelligence. And in July of that same year, representatives of the Iraqi regime met in Afghanistan with Taliban and al Qaeda leaders.

This appears to be the first public report of the July 1998 meetings. Meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda in March 1998 were first reported last year by Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star. In the days after the Iraq war, Potter and two colleagues took numerous files from the burned out headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. According to a memo they found, the March 1998 meetings in Baghdad were designed to "gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." Also on the table, according to the Iraqi Intelligence document, was "the future of our relationship with him."

The travel was facilitated by the Iraqi Intelligence station in Khartoum, Sudan, and according to the memo, was paid for by the Iraqi regime. Handwritten notes on the third page of the memo indicated that the bin Laden envoy arrived on March 5, 1998, and stayed as a guest of the Iraqi regime at Baghdad's Mansur Melia Hotel. Additional margin notes suggest that the meetings were extended by a week--for a total of 16 days.

THE 9/11 COMMISSION'S final report is one of three recent accounts that have added significantly to the public knowledge of the Iraq-al Qaeda connection. The other two are the Senate Intelligence Committee report and a June 25, 2004, article published in the New York Times. Taken together, the new information leaves in ruins the conventional wisdom that Iraq and al Qaeda were longtime enemies that would never cooperate.

From the Times, based on an internal Iraqi Intelligence document from the mid-1990s later authenticated by the U.S. intelligence community, we learned:

* That bin Laden "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative."

* That the Iraqi regime agreed to bin Laden's request to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda.

* That bin Laden "requested joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. had a strong troop presence in Saudi Arabia at the time.

* That following bin Laden's departure from Sudan, Iraq intelligence began "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship."

* That the Iraqi Intelligence service believed "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through

discussion and agreement."

* And that a Sudanese official in 1994 told Uday Hussein and the director of Iraqi Intelligence that bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan.

From the Senate Intelligence Committee report we learned:

* That George Tenet provided the Senate Intelligence Committee this assessment in a closed session on September 17, 2002: "There is evidence that Iraq provided al Qaeda with various kinds of training--combat, bomb-making, [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] CBRN. Although Saddam did not endorse al Qaeda's overall agenda and was suspicious of Islamist movements in general, he was apparently not averse, under certain circumstances, to enhancing bin Laden's operational capabilities. As with much of the information on the overall relationship, details on training are [redacted] from sources of varying reliability."

* That according to a CIA report called Iraqi Support for Terrorism, "the general pattern that emerges is one of al Qaeda's enduring interest in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) expertise from Iraq."

* That the Iraqi regime "certainly" had knowledge that Abu Musab al Zarqawi--described in Iraqi Support for Terrorism as "a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner"--was operating in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

* That the CIA reported that "any indication of a relationship between these two hostile elements could carry great dangers to the United States."

So what was the exact nature of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda? We still don't know. What we do know, however, is this: those who persist in claiming that there was no Iraq-al Qaeda connection are wrong.

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard. Parts of this article are drawn from his new book, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America (HarperCollins).

[bklynzzfinest]

I doubt it. They are all to busy kissing Howard Stern, and Michael Moore's ass.

[igloo]

The 9/11 Commission Describes the Link

From the August 2, 2004 issue: Its final report demolishes the claim that there is no evidence of Iraqi support for al Qaeda.

by Stephen F. Hayes

08/02/2004, Volume 009, Issue 44

"THERE WAS NO QUESTION in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Those are the words of Thomas Kean, the Republican co-chairman of the September 11 Commission. He made the statement on July 22, 2004, 10 days after a New York Times headline declared, "9/11 Report Is Said to Dismiss Iraq-Qaeda Alliance," and a month after another headline in the same paper blared, "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie."

The second of those stories came as part of the wide wave of media coverage that dismissed the Iraq-al Qaeda connection after a 9/11 Commission staff statement concluded that the available evidence did not suggest a "collaborative relationship." The staff statement was poorly worded and vague, and reporters long dubious of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship trumpeted the findings as definitive proof that the Bush administration had exaggerated the connection. The Los Angeles Times reported that the staff statement was the "most complete and authoritative dismissal" of the Bush case on Iraq-al Qaeda.

But the commission's final report presents a much more complicated picture. It cites repeated "friendly contacts" and details numerous high-level meetings between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda terrorists. It demolishes the claims of former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke that there was "no evidence" of Iraqi support for al Qaeda--in part by publishing excerpts of internal White House emails in which Clarke himself directly makes an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. The final report also amends the staff statement in two important ways, finding only

no "collaborative operational relationship" and specifying that these contacts did not indicate "that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."

The report provides details of several of the "friendly contacts," including meetings throughout the mid-1990s which suggest the outreach between Iraq and al Qaeda went both ways. In March 1998, "two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence." The public learns for the first time of a trip taken by Iraqi officials to Afghanistan in July 1998 in which they met first with representatives from the Taliban and later with bin Laden. According to the report, "sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through bin Laden's Egyptian deputy, [Ayman al] Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis." (THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported in November 2003 that Zawahiri met with Saddam Hussein in 1992. And, according to an interrogation of a senior Iraqi Intelligence official, Zawahiri received $300,000 from the Iraqi regime in 1998.)

This new information is helpful. But the report contains several gaping holes with respect to the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. Its overview of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center makes no mention of Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who has admitted mixing the chemicals for that attack. And in seeking to rule out any Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks, the panel allowed its conclusions to race ahead of the available evidence by relegating the intriguing story of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi present at a key 9/11 planning meeting, to a single, dismissive footnote.

"We have found no relationship whatever between Iraq and the attack on 9/11," asserted Kean. "That just doesn't exist."

Kean may end up being correct. But his categorical statement is premature.

The commission's final report offered the most detailed official account so far of Mohammed Atta's alleged meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, first reported by Czech intelligence. According to the commission, the Iraqi in question was not in Prague at the time of the alleged meeting. The commission doesn't reveal how it knows this, and given its credulous reporting of al Ani's denial of the meeting, one hopes this account of al Ani's whereabouts did not come from the Iraqi intelligence officer himself. Still, the commission's decision to address the question of the Prague meeting directly is admirable.

THE SAME cannot be said about Ahmed Hikmat Shakir. The details of Shakir's activities in late 1999 and early 2000 are familiar to readers of this magazine. They were summarized in the Senate Intelligence Committee's recent report on pre-Iraq war intelligence:

The first connection to the attack involved Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi national, who facilitated the travel of one of the September 11 hijackers to Malaysia in January 2000. [Redacted.] A foreign government service reported that Shakir worked for four months as an airport facilitator in Kuala Lumpur at the end of 1999 and beginning of 2000. Shakir claimed he got this job through Ra'ad al-Mudaris, an Iraqi Embassy employee. [Redacted.] Another source claimed that al-Mudaris was a former IIS [iraqi Intelligence

Service] officer. The CIA judged in "Iraqi Support for Terrorism," however, that al Mudaris' [redacted] that the circumstances surrounding the hiring of Shakir for this position did not suggest it was done on behalf of the IIS.

This chronology omits several details, according to sources familiar with the intelligence on Shakir. The three-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur was a key planning meeting for both the attack on the USS Cole and September 11. Al Mudaris, the Iraqi embassy employee, controlled Shakir's schedule at the airport. Shakir left his job two days after the al Qaeda meeting. More striking still, when Shakir was detained in Qatar on September 17, 2001, he was in possession of contact information for several high-ranking al Qaeda terrorists. These contacts included Zaid Sheikh Mohammed, the brother of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, and Musab Yasin, an Iraqi and the brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for the first World Trade Center attacks. Shakir was known to U.S. intelligence because he had received a phone call in 1993 from the safehouse where planning for the first WTC bombing took place. After his release from custody in Qatar, he was detained in Jordan as he attempted to travel to Baghdad. According to several officials with firsthand knowledge of the intelligence on Shakir, the Iraqi regime demonstrated a keen interest in Shakir's release. After being held for three months, he was released and is believed to have returned to Iraq. His current whereabouts are unknown.

The Senate concluded the "CIA's reluctance to draw a conclusion with regard to Shakir was reasonable based on the limited intelligence available and the analyst familiarity with the IIS."

But the 9/11 Commission did not mention Shakir in the body of its report, despite his having escorted hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar to the Kuala Lumpur meeting. Although the commission's account of the Kuala Lumpur meeting is otherwise exhaustive, the only reference to Shakir comes in a footnote on page 502 of the 567-page report. The commission does not address the substantive reporting on Shakir's activities. Instead, the footnote seeks only to clarify confusion resulting from public reports that a lieutenant colonel in the Saddam Fedayeen had a name similar to Shakir's.

Here is the relevant part of that footnote:

Mihdhar was met at the Kuala Lumpur airport by Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi national. Reports that he was a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi Fedayeen have turned out to be incorrect. They were based on a confusion of Shakir's identity with that of an Iraqi Fedayeen colonel with a similar name, who was later (in September 2001) in Iraq at the same time Shakir was in police custody in Qatar.

Had the lieutenant colonel been the same Shakir as the one in Kuala Lumpur, the intrigue surrounding his activities would have certainly been heightened. But the fact that there appear to have been two different Shakirs, while interesting, does nothing to explain the activities of the Shakir described in the Senate report. (The sourcing of the 9/11 Commission report on the two Shakirs inspires little confidence. The commission cites a report in the Washington Post co-bylined by Walter Pincus, whose unbridled cynicism on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection is well known.)

Several commission sources report that commissioners and the staff had access to this same chronology of Shakir's activities.

The question, then, remains: Who was Ahmed Hikmat Shakir? The answer is, we don't know.

In an interview, commissioner John Lehman, who supports the findings of the final report, says he wants to know more about Shakir.

LEHMAN: The Shakir in Kuala Lumpur has many interesting connections that are so multiple in their intersections with al Qaeda-related organizations and people as to suggest something more than random chance.

HAYES: With respect to both al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime?

LEHMAN: Yes. Both.

The commission's report was equally incomplete in its three-page treatment of the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. The account provides many specifics about the plot and its perpetrators. But one name is conspicuously absent: Abdul Rahman Yasin.

Yasin, an Iraqi, came to the United States in September 1992. He has admitted on national television in the United States--in a 2002 interview with 60 Minutes--that he mixed the chemicals for the bomb. He was detained twice by the FBI and, despite his intimate knowledge of the plot, was twice released. According to an overview in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, Yasin "fled to Iraq with Iraqi assistance." A reporter for Newsweek magazine and ABC News spotted Yasin in Baghdad in 1994 and reported that he was operating freely. A neighbor told the reporter that Yasin was working for the Iraqi government. Documents recovered in postwar Iraq indicate that Yasin received not only safe haven in Iraq, but also funding from the former Iraqi regime.

The commission report makes no mention of Yasin and, remarkably, praises the efforts of law enforcement. "The FBI and the Justice Department did excellent work investigating the bombing."

OTHER PARTS of the report and the public statements of commissioners do, however, broaden the public understanding of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. Taken together, they render laughable the arguments of those who still maintain there was "no connection."

Of particular interest are assessments of the Clinton administration and former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, whose credibility is reaching Joe Wilson lows. It was Clarke who famously declared on March 21, 2004: "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda. Ever."

The report notes that the Clinton Justice Department included the Iraq-al Qaeda connection in its spring 1998 sealed indictment of Osama bin Laden. That indictment came before the al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa--after which numerous Clinton officials cited an Iraqi connection to the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, destroyed by the United States in response to those al Qaeda attacks. The relevant paragraph of the indictment reads:

Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq.

According to the 9/11 Commission report, quoting from an email from Clarke to former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on November 4, 1998:

This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was "probably the direct result of the Iraq-al Qida (sic) agreement". Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the "exact formula used by Iraq."

No evidence? Ever?

In February 1999, when Berger recommended going after bin Laden with a U2 flight over Pakistan, Clarke objected. The flight would have to be approved by Pakistan, he reasoned, whose intelligence services were close to bin Laden and would likely warn him of the coming attacks. In an email to Berger on February 11, 1999, Clarke writes: "Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad."

At the press conference held to unveil the final report, Commission cochairman Kean fielded two questions about the Clinton administration's linking of Iraq to al Qaeda.

QUESTION: Former Defense Secretary William Cohen testified before your commission to the effect that the Clinton administration believed that Osama bin Laden and Iraq collaborated on the construction of a nerve gas factory in the Sudan. And it was on that basis that the factory was bombed on August 20th, 1998.

What I'd like to know is, given your finding that there was no collaborative operational relationship, what was it about that testimony and that issue that caused you not to give weight to Secretary Cohen's testimony before you?

KEAN: We gave weight to the testimony. And it's the same belief that President Clinton had, the same belief that Sandy Berger has. But there are a whole bunch of people on the other side who dispute that finding, who say there is no independent collaborative evidence that those chemicals were there.

And this is a debate that goes on. We were not able to come to a conclusion on that debate. We could say that there is no evidence that we found--independent evidence--that those chemicals were there. But I can tell you that the belief of people we all respect, from the president of the United States, President Clinton, down through Sandy Berger and down through Cohen, believe very, very strongly that they were right to target factory and in fact it was what they thought it was.

Curious, then, that President Clinton would tell the BBC in an interview on June 22, 2004 that the CIA "never believed that Saddam had any ties to al Qaeda." On March 23, 2004, Cohen testified under oath that he had seen intelligence indicating that an executive from the al Shifa plant "had traveled to Baghdad to meet with the father of the VX program."

Commissioner Lehman, who demonstrated a keen interest in the Iraq-al Qaeda connection in his questioning of commission witnesses, expects to learn more about that relationship.

"There may well be--and probably will be--additional intelligence coming in from interrogations and from analysis of captured records and so forth which will fill out the intelligence picture," he says. "This is not phrased as, nor meant to be, the definitive word on Iraqi Intelligence activities."

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard. Parts of this article are drawn from his new book, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America (HarperCollins).

[sobeton]

Will Bush critics correct themselves about Iraq and Al Qaeda? No Bush lied to the American people plain and simple.

[igloo]

Will Bush critics correct themselves about Iraq and Al Qaeda? No Bush lied to the American people plain and simple.

Give it up already jerkoff

[sobeton]

reality is a bitch!

[mursa]

Yo igloo , the truth hurts doesn't it ?!?

Sobeton simply pointing out the obvious and in a simple-transparent manner .

[igloo]

Yo igloo , the truth hurts doesn't it ?!?

Sobeton simply pointing out the obvious and in a simple-transparent manner .

Yeah, Sobeton really pointed out the obvious...Bush lied....blah, blah, blah..

...fucking bafoons....keep clinging to that--it really does wonders for your IQ

Fucking imbeciles

[obby]

Yeah, Sobeton really pointed out the obvious...Bush lied....blah, blah, blah..

...fucking bafoons....keep clinging to that--it really does wonders for your IQ

Fucking imbeciles

[sasser]

Give it up already jerkoff

Yeah, Sobeton really pointed out the obvious...Bush lied....blah, blah, blah..

...fucking bafoons....keep clinging to that--it really does wonders for your IQ

Fucking imbeciles

Truth is a bitch, then you married one Iglost! HA HA HA!!

Give it up assclown.

[jtk4]

I think that al queda hed ties with certain people in iraq but that does not mean that the whole power structure in iraq was involved in the planning or funding or al queda.

If you did enough research you could finds linksbetween al qaeda and sudan, saudi arabia, iran, packastan, syria, Egypt and other countries. Shit there were people in the US who helped those fuck bags.

What the paper should of said is that there was not enough evidence to go to war against iraq. Or that there were links between al qaeda and a dozen countries. Why Iraq? That is the question