Forums › Life › Politics, Media & Current Events › No evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq link!
Rumsfeld: No evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq link!
In 2002, he said intelligence was ‘very reliable’
Reuters
Updated: 7:43 p.m. ET Oct. 4, 2004
WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday that he knew of no “strong, hard evidence” linking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaida, despite describing extensive contacts between the two before the invasion of Iraq.
During a question-and-answer session before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Rumsfeld was asked to explain the connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, which is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
“I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over a period of a year in the most amazing way. Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was,” Rumsfeld said. “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.
“I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who’s connected to al-Qaida who was in and out of Iraq. And it is the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship and why he might not have had a relationship. It may have been something that was not representative of a hard linkage.”
U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and toppled Saddam and his government in a war whose main justification offered by the United States was the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been discovered.
But the relationship between Saddam’s government and al-Qaida also figured in the U.S. case for war.
‘Credible information’
A small Defense Department intelligence-analysis office found what it considered evidence of Iraq-al-Qaida ties. Rumsfeld was one of the Bush administration officials publicly describing this link. On Sept. 26, 2002, Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon of evidence of contacts and cooperation.
“We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior-level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical and biological agent training. And when I say ‘contacts,’ I mean between Iraq and al-Qaida,” Rumsfeld said at the time.
“We have what we believe to be credible information that Iraq and al-Qaida have discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq, reciprocal non-aggression discussions. We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al-Qaida leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons of mass destruction capabilities,” Rumsfeld added at the time.
The bipartisan commission that studied the 2001 attacks concluded in July that there was no evidence of a “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaida or an Iraqi role in attacking the United States.
Rumsfeld was also asked Monday what was the “No. 1 reason for the war.”
Rumsfeld said President Bush made the judgment that Saddam “ran a vicious regime that had used weapons of mass destruction on its own people, as well as its neighbors, and that it was important to set that right by removing that regime before they, in fact, did gather weapons of mass destruction, either themselves or transferring them to terrorist networks.”
Before the war, U.S. officials spoke of Iraq’s already possessing weapons of mass destruction, not a potential for gathering them.
“It turns out that we have not found weapons of mass destruction,” Rumsfeld said.
“And why the intelligence proved wrong, I’m not in a position to say. I simply don’t know. But the world is a lot better off with Saddam Hussein in jail than they were with him in power,” Rumsfeld added.
Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
It was obvious at the time (to anyone who follows international politics) that any links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Quida were bare-faced lies. The ideological gap between Saddam, who wanted a pan-arabic state, and Al-Quida, which wants an Islamic state is vast: ‘Arab’ includes many different religions.
I suppose something had to be done to put an end to the last 12 years of incessant bombing of Iraq and the sanctions which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. I think that UK and US didn’t want to lose face by simply stopping; they needed to finish it off with a war for their own pride. 😡
I caught an interesting admission in a documentary on Saddam recently whereby a senior US military official attributed his arming Iraq, becoming fervantly pro-arab, anti-western and aggressive towards his richer neighbours squarely on the Israeli bombing of his Nuclear power plant in the 80’s…
God what a mess!
Originally posted by Site
Rumsfeld: No evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq link!In 2002, he said intelligence was ‘very reliable’
Reuters
Updated: 7:43 p.m. ET Oct. 4, 2004
WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday that he knew of no “strong, hard evidence” linking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaida, despite describing extensive contacts between the two before the invasion of Iraq.
Rumsfeld said. “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.
fucking clowns
and more to the point, these people are representative of the masses, shit man, why don’t we give a shit?????
> fucking clowns
> and more to the point, these people are representative of the
> masses, shit man, why don’t we give a shit?????
Too busy consuming, worrying about recession, worrying about foreigners, being unemployed, getting high, getting pissed, being afraid, lazy, apethetic, too fat, too thin, too confused, waaaay too subdued or killing foxes…
Take your pick! We all have blood on our hands 🙁
>God what a mess!
Bad choice of words, come to think of it!
ok, so this point came up when i was talking to globalloon, how do WE make a difference when everyone i come in contact with wants more or bigger or better stuff?? Subvergance? I am more than happy to take the fight to the corporations, but i feel that whatever i do will be turned around and used against me (anti-society hippy branding etc).
So, if anyone wishes to contact me outside of any site influence and perhaps do something (call it “reeducation of the masses”)
then drop me a line on s0349625@sms.ed.ac.uk
and lets get tagging
peace
> ok, so this point came up when i was talking to globalloon, how do > WE make a difference when everyone i come in contact with wants
> more or bigger or better stuff?? Subvergance? I am more than happy > to take the fight to the corporations, but i feel that whatever i
> do will be turned around and used against me (anti-society hippy
> branding etc).
I’ll confess the only things I’ve found from the subject are feelings of guilt and culpability! Having said that there’s obviously a lot to be said for doing whatever you can really…
U.S. Inspector at Odds with Bush on Iraq Weapons
Wed Oct 6, 2004 11:58 AM ET
By Vicki Allen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons before last year’s U.S.-led invasion and its nuclear program had decayed since the 1991 Gulf War, a weapons inspector appointed by the Bush administration said on Wednesday.
The assessment contrasted with statements by President Bush before the invasion, when he cited a growing threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as the reason for overthrowing President Saddam Hussein.
“I still do not expect that militarily significant WMD stocks are cached in Iraq,” Charles Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, said in testimony prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee obtained by Reuters.
He said Iraq’s nuclear weapons program had deteriorated since the 1991 Gulf War, but he said Saddam did not abandon his nuclear ambitions.
The issue has figured prominently in the campaign for the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election, with Bush’s Democratic opponent John Kerry saying Bush rushed to war without allowing U.N. inspections enough time to check out Iraq’s armaments.
Bush, who has given varying justifications for the war, said in a speech in Pennsylvania on Wednesday that the concern was that terrorists would get banned weapons from Saddam.
“There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks,” Bush said.
“In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take,” he said, referring to the 2001 attacks on the United States attributed to al Qaeda.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Duelfer said a risk that has emerged since he last briefed Congress on the status of the WMD hunt was a connection between chemical weapons experts from Saddam’s former regime with insurgents fighting the U.S.-led forces now in Iraq.
“I believe we got ahead of this problem through a series of raids throughout the spring and summer. I am convinced we successfully contained a problem before it matured into a major threat,” Duelfer said.
“Nevertheless, it points to the problem that the dangerous expertise developed by the previous regime could be transferred to other hands,” he said.
Duelfer said that by the time of the war in 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in months and nerve agent in less than a year.
“We have not come across explicit guidance from Saddam on this point, yet it was an inherent consequence of his decision to develop a domestic chemical production capacity,” Duelfer said.
Duelfer said that “despite Saddam’s expressed desire to retain the knowledge of his nuclear team, and his attempts to retain some key parts of the program (after 1991), during the course of the following 12 years Iraq’s ability to produce a weapon decayed.”
Duelfer briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee behind closed doors about his report in the morning and was to testify later at an open Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
“While it is clear that Saddam wanted a long-range missile, there was little work done on warheads. It is apparent that he drew the line at that point … so long as sanctions remained,” Duelfer said.
One of Saddam’s priorities was to escape U.N. sanctions, he said.
“Over time, sanctions had steadily weakened to the point where Iraq, in 2000-2001 was confidently designing missiles around components that could only be obtained outside sanctions,” Duelfer said.
Duelfer’s key conclusion tallied with that of his predecessor, David Kay, who said when he stepped down in January that no large stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons existed in Iraq when the United States went to war.
© Copyright Reuters 2004. All rights reserved.
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Forums › Life › Politics, Media & Current Events › No evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq link!
