ashthomas//blog: Iraq and al Qaeda

ashthomas//blog

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Iraq and al Qaeda

It is really baffling sometimes--the level of ignorance of current affairs in the United States always amazes me. It is not just ignorance, which can be understood if not forgiven. It is misbelief, the acceptance of patent untruths, and it is frustrating to think that real public discourse is overshadowed by a lack of consensus on the basic facts. This from USA
Today
:
[A] new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll found that 42% of those surveyed thought the former Iraqi leader was involved in the attacks on New York City and Washington. In response to another question, 32% said they thought Saddam had personally planned them.

Readers will know my stand on the Iraq War. I believe it was justified and overdue, but poorly-planned. I also do not think that it had anything to do with 9/11 except tangentially. 9/11 was not the reason for the Iraq War, although it created a climate in the world that made the Iraq War more palatable.

The article linked to above reports on a speech that Donald Rumsfeld made at the Council on Foreign Relations on October 4th. This question was put to Rumsfeld:

Mr. Secretary, what exactly was the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?

Rumsfeld's full response:

I tell you, I'm not going to answer the question. I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over the period of a year in the most amazing way. Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was. To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two. There are--I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who's connected to al Qaeda, who was in and out of Iraq, and there's the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship, and why he might not have had a relationship. There are reports about people in Saddam Hussein's intelligence service meeting in one country or another with al Qaeda people from one person to another, which may have been indicative of something, or may not have been. It may have been something that was not representative of a hard linkage.

What we do know is that Saddam Hussein was on the terrorist list. We do know they were giving $25,000 to suicide bombers. So, this is not the Little Sisters of
the Poor. [Laughter.] But, what I would--to answer it, when I'm in Washington, I pull out a piece of paper and say, I don't know, because I'm not in that business, but I'll tell you what the CIA thinks, and I read it--the public version of it. If you want a--not terribly current now, but [former Director of Central Intelligence] George Tenet did testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a version of it was unclassified--declassified--later which you can get and read if you want to see the answer that he gave.

But it is--it is--the relationships between these folks are complicated. They evolve and change over time. In many cases, these different networks have common funders. In many cases, they cooperate not in a chain of command, but in a loose affiliation--a franchising arrangement almost, where they go do different things and cooperate, but they're not, in the case of al Qaeda, most--my impression is, most of the senior people have actually sworn an oath to Osama bin Laden, and even, to my knowledge, even as of this late date, I don't believe [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi, the principal leader of the network in Iraq, has sworn an oath, even though what they're doing--I mean, they're just two peas in a pod in terms of what they're doing.

So, it is too complicated for me to try to pretend I'm the expert analyst on the subject, and for that I apologize.

It is significant that one of the major players in the Bush Administration has finally come out and stated that the link between Hussein and al Qaeda is weak, and I hope it is a stand that other Republicans can bring themselves to make as well. But it seems unlikely. Dick Cheney in the Vice Presidential debate tried to dodge the issue (transcript from the Boston Globe):

EDWARDS: Mr. Vice President, there is no connection between the attacks of September 11th and Saddam Hussein. The 9/11 Commission has said it. Your own secretary of state has said it. And you've gone around the country suggesting that there is some connection. There is not.

And in fact the CIA is now about to report that the connection between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein is tenuous at best. And, in fact, the secretary of defense said yesterday that he knows of no hard evidence of the connection.

We need to be straight with the American people.

[...]

[T]here is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th -- period.

The 9/11 Commission has said that's true. Colin Powell has said it's true. But the vice president keeps suggesting that there is. There is not. And, in fact, any connection with Al Qaida is tenuous at best.

[...]

CHENEY: The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.

And the point is that that's the place where you're most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years.

Josh Marshall does a much better analysis than I could do ever do, but I will quote his conclusion: "Purely on the basis of this evening's debate, Cheney has a mammoth credibility problem. Again and again he said things that were simply false."