Senate: Saddam saw al-Qaida as threat

[Kagom]

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, a Senate report says, contradicting assertions President Bush has used to build support for the war in Iraq.

Released Friday, the report discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that before the war, Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

Saddam told U.S. officials after his capture that he had not cooperated with Osama bin Laden even though he acknowledged that officials in his government had met with the al-Qaida leader, according to FBI summaries cited in the Senate report.

"Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden," Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi leader's top aide, told the FBI.

The report also faults intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.

As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with Zarqawi."

Democrats contended that the administration continues to use faulty intelligence, including assertions of a link between Saddam's government and the recently killed al-Zarqawi, to justify the war in Iraq.

They also said, in remarks attached to Friday's Senate Intelligence Committee document, that former CIA Director George Tenet had modified his position on the terrorist link at the request of administration policymakers.

Republicans said the document, which compares prewar intelligence with post-invasion findings on Iraq's weapons and on terrorist groups, broke little new ground. And they said Democrats were distorting it for political purposes.

A previous report in 2004 made clear the intelligence agencies' "massive failures," said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a member of the committee. "Yet to make a giant leap in logic to claim that the Bush administration intentionally misled the nation or manipulated intelligence is simply not warranted."

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the report was "nothing new."

A second part of the report concluded that false information from the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam group led by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi, was used to support key U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq.

It said U.S. intelligence agents put out numerous red flags about the reliability of INC sources but the intelligence community made a "serious error" and used one source who concocted a story that Iraq was building mobile biological weapons laboratories.

The report also said that in 2002 the National Security Council directed that funding for the INC should continue "despite warnings from both the CIA, which terminated its relationship with the INC in December 1996, and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), that the INC was penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including the Iranians."

According to the report, postwar findings indicate that Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime."

It said al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad from May until late November 2002. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."

In June 2004, Bush defended Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida," the president said.

The report concludes that postwar findings do not support a 2002 intelligence report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or had ever developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents.

"The report is a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was linked with al-Qaida," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., a member of the committee.

Levin and Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, said Tenet told the committee last July that in 2002 he had complied with an administration request "to say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said" about the Saddam-terrorist link.

They said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the same day Bush gave a speech speaking of such a link, the CIA had sent a declassified letter to the committee saying it would be an "extreme step" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in attacking the United States.

They said Tenet acknowledged to the committee that subsequently issuing a statement that there was no inconsistency between the president's speech and the CIA viewpoint was "the wrong thing to do."

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the mistakes of prewar intelligence have long been known and "the additional views of the committee's Democrats are little more than a rehashing of the same unfounded allegations they've used for over three years."

The panel report is Phase II of an analysis of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The first phase, issued in July 2004, focused on the CIA's failings in its estimates of Iraq's weapons program.

The second phase had been delayed as Republicans and Democrats fought over what information should be declassified and how far the committee should delve into the question of whether policymakers may have manipulated intelligence to make the case for war.

Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he planned to ask for an investigation into the amount of information remaining classified. He said, "I am particularly concerned it appears that information may have been classified to shield individuals from accountability."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060909/ap_on_go_co/iraq_report

 

[Stephanie]

Rat Bastards.....:wank:

 

[musicman]

Consider, for a moment, the glorious possibility that this president - unlike the six who came before him - actually understood and accepted that war was being waged against us. And that perhaps it was time we began participating in - and prosecuting - this war. And that he judged Iraq to be a good strategic place from which to take the offensive in what is going to be a long, vicious war against an enemy which transcends borders and nationalities. An enemy whose only goal is to destroy as many of us as possible - who can't be reasoned with - who can't be bargained with - who contemptuously interprets all efforts at sanity and negotiation as decadence, weakness, and lack of resolve - who will only quit the battle when enough of his numbers have been blown to bits that he becomes convinced he is not dealing with the bloated walking dead of Post-Christian Europe, but with tough, wide-awake Americans - and that perhaps he'd better retreat to the reeking cave he and his ancestors have been wallowing in since the Eighth Century, and wait for a more opportune time to promote his dreams of terror and world domination.

And, suppose that - in the bargain - this president was able to depose a murderous dictator who murdered millions of his own people, while thumbing his nose at the toothless, impotent world body which had danced around him - clownlike - barking meaningless orders - while jerking him off under the table for a few dollars a pop - for the preceding dozen years.

Would that put the Iraq War in any better perspective for you?

 

[Dr Grump]

Consider, for a moment, the glorious possibility that this president - unlike the six who came before him - actually understood and accepted that war was being waged against us. And that perhaps it was time we began participating in - and prosecuting - this war. And that he judged Iraq to be a good strategic place from which to take the offensive in what is going to be a long, vicious war against an enemy which transcends borders and nationalities. An enemy whose only goal is to destroy as many of us as possible .

Yeah!!!! That's a BRILLIANT strategy!!! Let's start in Iraq. A country run by a dictator for sure, but one of the most SECULAR countries in the ME. Let's not start in the hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism such as Iran, or Saudi, or Algeria, or Pakistan, or Somalia, or Sudan - you know, places that really DO want to KILL infidels. Nah, we'll start in secular Iraq. What a brilliant strategy. Bush is a genius...

 

[musicman]

Yeah!!!! That's a BRILLIANT strategy!!! Let's start in Iraq. A country run by a dictator for sure, but one of the most SECULAR countries in the ME. Let's not start in the hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism such as Iran, or Saudi, or Algeria, or Pakistan, or Somalia, or Sudan - you know, places that really DO want to KILL infidels. Nah, we'll start in secular Iraq. What a brilliant strategy. Bush is a genius...

So, how many infidels have been killed on American soil since 9/11? The idea was to take the fight to the murderers on their own ground, and away from ours - right? It's working - right? Right!

 

[Dr Grump]

So, how many infidels have been killed on American soil since 9/11? The idea was to take the fight to the murderers on their own ground, and away from ours - right? It's working - right? Right!

So as long as Americans are being killed in Iraq it's OK? It was 8 years between both WT bombings. They are patient. Oh, and what murderers of United States' citizens have come out of Iraq?

That aside, you initial supposition is flawed. I see no evidence that Bush jnr knows/knew a war is being waged against the west. Tying his shoelaces together...now that's something he's capable of grasping...

 

[Stephanie]

snip.. lots more at the site.......
In June of 1997, Iraq officials had ratcheted up their obstruction of UNSCOM inspection efforts. They interfered with UNSCOM air operations and denied and delayed access of inspectors to sites. In September, they burned documents at sites while inspectors watched outside the front entrance. By mid-November, Saddam Hussein had demanded an end to U-2 surveillance flights over Iraq and called on American inspectors to leave Iraq.1 Iraqis also began moving equipment that could produce weapons of mass destruction out of the range of video cameras inspectors had installed inside key industrial facilities.2

At first, the Clinton administration adopted a generally reserved tone toward Saddam's provocations. "We believe that he needs to fulfill all the Security Council obligations and that that is an appropriate way to deal with him," commented Secretary Albright at a November 5 press conference with the German foreign minister.3

The next day Secretary Cohen held a ceremony unrelated to Iraq, but, citing "an unusual array" of journalists present, he also spoke on Iraq. "t's imperative that Iraq comply with U.N. mandates," said Cohen, but "the task right now, however, is to persuade them to cease and desist from their obstruction." And when asked what would be the consequences should Saddam not comply, Cohen said simply, "it's important that we not speculate what those reactions might be."4

Striking a similar tone on November 10 at the Pentagon, Vice President Gore stated that "Saddam has taken steps that interfere with the ability of the inspection team to carry out its mission." He added, "The procedure chosen to deal with this situation is to engage him in discussions in which he can be made aware that this is not a smart thing for him to do, and he ought to change his mind."5

But Saddam remained defiant. So on Friday, November 14, President Clinton and his top advisors met at the White House and decided to launch a public campaign to build support for a possible war against Iraq.


"Prepare the Country for War"

The New York Times reported that at the November 14 meeting the "White House decided to prepare the country for war." According to the Times, "[t]he decision was made to begin a public campaign through interviews on the Sunday morning television news programs to inform the American people of the dangers of biological warfare."6 During this time, the Washington Post reported that President Clinton specifically directed Cohen "to raise the profile of the biological and chemical threat."7

On November 16, Cohen made a widely reported appearance on ABC's This Week in which he placed a five-pound bag of sugar on the table and stated that that amount of anthrax "would destroy at least half the population" of Washington, D.C. Cohen explained how fast a person could die once exposed to anthrax. "One of the things we found with anthrax is that one breath and you are likely to face death within five days. One small particle of anthrax would produce death within five days." And he noted that Iraq "has had enormous amounts" of anthrax. Cohen also spoke on the extreme lethality of VX nerve agent: "One drop [of VX] from this particular thimble as such -- one single drop will kill you within a few minutes." And he reminded the world that Saddam may have enough VX to kill "millions, millions, if it were properly dispersed and through aerosol mechanisms."8

"The War of Words Grows; U.S.: Poisons Are World Threat" headlined the New York Daily News Monday morning.9 CBS News said the White House had begun "a new tack, warning in the darkest possible terms of the damage which Saddam Hussein could inflict with his chemical and biological weapons."10 And in "America the Vulnerable; A disaster is just waiting to happen if Iraq unleashes its poison and germs," Time wrote that "officials in Washington are deeply worried about what some of them call 'strategic crime.' By that they mean the merging of the output from a government's arsenals, like Saddam's biological weapons, with a group of semi-independent terrorists, like radical Islamist groups, who might slip such bioweapons into the U.S. and use them."11

This message was echoed in a series of remarks President Clinton delivered the same week.


"I say this not to frighten you"

In Sacramento, November 15, Clinton painted a bleak future if nations did not cooperate against "organized forces of destruction," telling the audience that only a small amount of "nuclear cake put in a bomb would do ten times as much damage as the Oklahoma City bomb did." Effectively dealing with proliferation and not letting weapons "fall into the wrong hands" is "fundamentally what is stake in the stand off we're having in Iraq today."

He asked Americans to not to view the current crisis as a "replay" of the Gulf War in 1991. Instead, "think about it in terms of the innocent Japanese people that died in the subway when the sarin gas was released [by the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo in 1995]; and how important it is for every responsible government in the world to do everything that can possibly be done not to let big stores of chemical or biological weapons fall into the wrong hands, not to let irresponsible people develop the capacity to put them in warheads on missiles or put them in briefcases that could be exploded in small rooms. And I say this not to frighten you."12

Again in Wichita, November 17, Clinton said that what happens in Iraq "matters to you, to your children and to the future, because this is a challenge we must face not just in Iraq but throughout the world. We must not allow the 21st century to go forward under a cloud of fear that terrorists, organized criminals, drug traffickers will terrorize people with chemical and biological weapons the way the nuclear threat hung over the heads of the whole world through the last half of this century. That is what is at issue."13
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20040623.htm

 

[Stephanie]

Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he planned to ask for an investigation into the amount of information remaining classified. He said, "I am particularly concerned it appears that information may have been classified to shield individuals from accountability."

If I must I'll say it again...
Rat Bastards......:wank:

 

[musicman]

So as long as Americans are being killed in Iraq it's OK?

We're at war, Dr Grump. Tragically, Americans die in wars - which is made even more tragic by the fact that a good percentage of the people at home have made it their life's work to A) politicize everything that happens, and national security be damned, B) Monday-morning quarterback the conduct of the war in direct inverse ratio to the degree they know WTF they're talking about, and C) downplay the fact that THEY HAVEN'T HAD ANY JETS FLY UP THEIR ASSES FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS.

It was 8 years between both WT bombings. They are patient.

They didn't just sit on their asses getting blowjobs for those 8 years, Dr Grump. You're confusing them with someone else...

Oh, and what murderers of United States' citizens have come out of Iraq?

Immaterial; the enemies in this war transcend borders and nationalities.

That aside, you initial supposition is flawed. I see no evidence that Bush jnr knows/knew a war is being waged against the west. Tying his shoelaces together...now that's something he's capable of grasping...

That's really good, Dr Grump; I'll have to remember that. The next time I have nothing of any real substance to say, I'll just throw out some retarded shit like that.

 

[Stephanie]

And another idiotic thing in that stupid article....

Saddam told U.S. officials after his capture that he had not cooperated with Osama bin Laden even though he acknowledged that officials in his government had met with the al-Qaeda leader, according to FBI summaries cited in the Senate report.

"Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden," Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi leader's top aide, told the FBI.

Their friggin quoting Saddam Hussein.
Yeah, he's saying weeeeeeeeeellll golly gee, I would never have anything to do with a terrorist group.......yuk, yuk, yuk......

Now there's a mans word we can f@@king trust......


Some people.......:duh3:

 

[Hobbit]

So, you claim Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaida. I say, "So what?" If you'll remember, we spent over 40 years fighting communism in all its forms. China and the U.S.S.R. were two such forms of communism. They were also bitter enemies. Our main enemy was Russia, but that didn't make China our friend (until Clinton came along, but that's another story for another day). In fact, we had more shooting battles with the Chinese than we'd even think about with the Russians. They were in both Korea and Vietnam. So consider this. Maybe Saddam and Al-Qaida were unrelated. Maybe they were bitter enemies. Maybe they were friend with each other. In the end, it doesn't matter, because both are our enemies.

And on one final note, I'm sick of hearing people say that we shouldn't have taken on Iraq becuase it was the most secular country in the Middle East. Secular does not mean good. The U.S.S.R., Red China, Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea all were or are completely secular (even taking it to the extreme of state enforced atheism), yet they all were or are dangerous enemies of the United States.

The fact is that, until the left started this campaign of defeatism, Iraq was working. Everybody saw that we were willing to back up our words. Qadhafi started dismantling his nukes. Pakistan decided to cooperate. Several other formerly hostile countries began to acquiesce to our demands. But no more. The defeatist movment has left us impotent to the Islamic world. We'll have to kick more ass before we'll get anything else out of diplomacy over there.

 

[Kagom]

Hobbit: Iraq isn't working and I'll admit it was in the beginning, but it turned to the shitter rather quick. I have a friend who went to Iraq BEFORE we declared war on it. He wont' say it was the best place in the world because we all know it wasn't and he only confirmed that it wasn't the most cheerful and uplifting place, but they were able to go about their daily lives without fear of being gunned down or killed (unless they were political enemies and the such. They're never safe).

His opinion after we had gone to Iraq was "It's worse, a lot worse. People are afraid to be in the streets for fear of being shot or killed. They want us out of there so they can get back to their normal lives and rebuild."

He did, however, have this to say too: "Iran is looking to Iraq the way Soviet Russia looked to China to influence them with Communism. Whether we pull out now or in ten years, Iran will sweep in and spread its influence."

He's really into Middle Eastern politics and is the only friend I have who has been to Iraq before and after. Just for some credential-like things.

 

[Annie]

Hobbit: Iraq isn't working and I'll admit it was in the beginning, but it turned to the shitter rather quick. I have a friend who went to Iraq BEFORE we declared war on it. He wont' say it was the best place in the world because we all know it wasn't and he only confirmed that it wasn't the most cheerful and uplifting place, but they were able to go about their daily lives without fear of being gunned down or killed (unless they were political enemies and the such. They're never safe).

His opinion after we had gone to Iraq was "It's worse, a lot worse. People are afraid to be in the streets for fear of being shot or killed. They want us out of there so they can get back to their normal lives and rebuild."

He did, however, have this to say too: "Iran is looking to Iraq the way Soviet Russia looked to China to influence them with Communism. Whether we pull out now or in ten years, Iran will sweep in and spread its influence."

He's really into Middle Eastern politics and is the only friend I have who has been to Iraq before and after. Just for some credential-like things.

Interesting that I've found little from Iraqis that back up what you say. Here is one example of a different point of view, from an Iraqi. Notice that it doesn't deny the lack of security? However, what IS different, is the possibility of Hope. There are worse things than being in a stranglehold of 'security', where your wife or daughter can be raped before your eyes or you receive the bill for the bullet that killed your parents:

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2006/08/tale-of-two-tribes-gang-and-militia.html

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

What we need is a united vision.
The war with terror is still on and every new anniversary of the September attacks approaches is a reminder of how fierce this war is and how deep and cruel the evil inside that terror is.

We in Iraq need no special occasions to remind us of that; the front is still on fire and the daily confrontation leaves no place for doubt in our minds about the aggressive nature of terrorism against everything that opposes its ideology even when the opposition is represented by an Arab or Muslim trend whether Sunni, Shia or any other variation, let alone the Christians, Jews, Buddhists or non-religious people.
This aggressive ideology does not aim at achieving limited tactical objectives like many conventional wars are but it presents its goals as an attempt to impose one doctrine on the entire world as it considers everyone who does not abide by this doctrine an infidel who deserves no less than death as punishment.

What concerns me here while we are amid this continuous confrontation on the first front of war on terror is the world's position from this war. When I say Iraq is the first front in this war, I mean what I say and it's not a personal opinion but it's what the leaders of al-Qaeda have said and it's what the acts and intentions of terror-supporting regimes have proven through rejecting the democratic change in Iraq and siding with al-Qaeda to make Iraq fail by all means they have. Such regimes have been providing terrorism with financial, logistic and media aid showing clearly that their goal is one which is not allowing a plural democratic power from emerging in the middle east since that is also a common threat to both, totalitarian regimes and the ideology of terrorism.

Looking at how many free countries deal with this war disappoints me, their failure to form a united front to deal with the challenge and hesitation in addressing the magnitude of the threat has reflected negatively on us who have chosen freedom and pluralism and rejected totalitarianism and extremism.
This failure to agree on a common policy is one of the main pretexts used by the enemy in making wrong judgments and even helps terrorists pretend they are right by exploiting the fact that the west itself is not in agreement over confronting them and that the war on terror is merely waged by a few "Zionist-backed crusaders".
This gives the terrorists the advantage as they watch our differences grow and countries break away from the alliance or act reluctantly; the terrorists view each of these as a sign for victory and an indication that it's a matter of time until the global alliance against them collapses.

What we need now is a united world vision in this regard, a vision that can be implemented through a road map that we all approve and agree within which on adopting the strategy of preemptive war with all its political, military, economic and cultural means.

On the other hand lack of coordination and consensus in looking at and dealing with terror and terror-supporters can only lead to more losses and more victims on our side, some of us in this world need to make up their mind now, realize the seriousness of the threat and stop being inept is playing the global role that history assigned to the free and powerful west.

I wonder what's stopping many countries in Europe from doing what they have to do despite the clear intentions of the enemy and the fact that this enemy made clear its hostility to everything and everyone different, and we see this hostility translate into indiscriminate slaughter that doesn't even care about knowing the religious, political or social orientation of its victims like we saw in September 11 or Madrid or Egypt or London or Jordan and like we see every single day in Iraq.

Terrorism did not target governments or armies as much as it targeted civilian life in the form of markets, trains, hospitals, worship places and even crowds of children and old crippled people.

Then why is the delay and why is the reluctance in taking a firm position and standing united to face the threat?

I think the short-sightedness of some countries, especially in Europe, comes from the following points:

The world in general thinks the threat is currently directed at the United States only for political reasons related to America's stance regarding the issues of the Arab and Muslim world especially the Arab-Israeli conflict. This in my opinion is utterly shallow, such politicians who reiterate this theory are like parrots imitating the totalitarian regimes in the region that use conspiracy theories and feed hatred to their people trying to convince the people that the problem lays within the west and use this to repress aspirations for reform.

It also looks clear that many countries think they can stay away from harm by running away from the confrontation but lessons from history, near history that is, prove that this strategy carries no cure for the disease.

The Soviet Union for example was an avid supporter of Arab countries and assisted them during various chapters of their long conflict with Israel; the Soviets provided Arabs with weapons, money, political support and even technically fought on their side at some points but what did the Soviets, and later the Russians, get in return for those favors?
All I can see is thousands of jihadists roaming through what remained of the Soviet Union spreading death and fear and murdering Russian civilians even inside Moscow itself in the hope they can impose a Salafi regime in that part of the world… all the time Moscow spent sucking up for Arab dictators couldn't spare the Russian blood.

The same with the Europeans who kept pampering Iran for so long and in return the Mullah's reward them by developing missiles that can strike deep into the heart of Europe! And it seems the next reward from Iran will be supplying these missiles with more impressive fireworks.

As you can see It's not only the direction of the threat that the world fails to see but it's also the size of this threat, many think America is exaggerating it to help pass its plans for the world while in fact I see that America is only looking farther than the rest of these countries, maybe it was September 11 that made America see and believe that the threat is actually growing with time and that one day in the future it will have to deal with terrorists armed with much more deadly weapons that they have now.

This is going to happen sooner or later and we already see the feverish pursuit of some countries for acquiring weapons of mass destruction and there is no clearer way to declare such intentions than to declare one's intentions of wiping this or that country off the map.

It might be true that the threat at this point is not big enough and might not equate for a possible serious harm but the case will not remain so for a long time if we did not stand firm to contain it and put an end to its growth.

The other thing I see in some countries' attitudes is frankly a form of parasitism, cowardice and irresponsible dependence by trying to through the entire load on the shoulders of America in a mean, yet stupid, policy to avoid paying the price on the short term. They forget that by doing so they are not really saving lives and treasure but only delaying the payment for some time but the price then will be much bigger.

If only they could look deeper they would see that a sooner victory in the Middle East and helping this region evolve into a democratic and prosperous one means a better market and a lesser threat and even less immigration from the south/east to the north/west and that sacrifices made today will make the world a better place for future generations whom we can spare from paying for our mistakes.

Posted by Mohammed

 

[Kagom]

Interesting that I've found little from Iraqis that back up what you say. Here is one example of a different point of view, from an Iraqi. Notice that it doesn't deny the lack of security? However, what IS different, is the possibility of Hope. There are worse things than being in a stranglehold of 'security', where your wife or daughter can be raped before your eyes or you receive the bill for the bullet that killed your parents:

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2006/08/tale-of-two-tribes-gang-and-militia.html

I only heard what my friend told me from his encounters and talks with the Iraqi people.

 

[Annie]

I only heard what my friend told me from his encounters and talks with the Iraqi people.

I understand that. At the same time there are literally hundreds or more Iraqis posting daily, I try to read some with regularity. Obviously it's easier when the English is clear as one finds at Iraq the Model.

 

[Annie]

There are links. So what's with this 'Senate finding?':

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008020.php

September 09, 2006
Phase II Report: Saddam Retained Banned Missiles, Biological Stocks

Thanks to the genius of CQ reader Harrison Colter, I now have searchable PDFs of the Phase II reports. The new copies have already paid dividends. In the overall report on pre-war intel accuracy, two of the conclusions of the report seem to have gotten lost in the mainstream media coverage. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has concluded that Saddam Hussein maintained his stocks of biological material intended to create weapons as well as missiles banned by the cease-fire in 1991. In fact, as the report states, Saddam never accepted the missile-range restrictions and intentionally developed missiles to violate them.

These conclusions, numbers 4 and 8, appear on pages 54 through 58:

Although Iraq no longer had a large scale BW production capability after 1996, Iraq did retain an inherent dual-use BW capability. Iraq retained technical B W know-how through scientists who were involved in the pre- 199 1 B W program, as well as civilian facilities and equipment that could be bent to a BW purpose. Iraq also retained some BW-related seed stocks until after Operation Iraqi Freedom; and conducted BW-applicable research after 1996, but the ISG judged that the research was not conducted for the purposes of a BW program.

The ISG assessed that Iraq could have re-established an “elementary” BW program within a few weeks to months, but would have faced great difficulty in re-establishing an effective BW agent production capability. In addition, the ISG found no evidence that Iraq had plans after 1996 for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes. The ISG found undeclared covert laboratories used by the Iraqi Intelligence Service for research in BW agents until the mid-l 990s. While uncertain of the laboratories’ purpose, the ISG noted that the work probably included development of poisons for assassination. The ISG found no “conclusive links” between these labs and a BW effort despite speculation and rumor of a possible BW role. Thus, while the Intelligence Community correctly identified many Iraqi dual-use BW capabilities, it incorrectly judged that they represented an active BW program.
​

This points out one of the difficult aspects of intelligence work, especially when dealing with a police state like Saddam's Iraq. Intel agencies have to take all of the information they have and then analyze it against all of the possible scenarios. Before 9/11 and before any indication that we faced an enemy determined to kill us through terrorism on a massive scale, the context of the analysis concerned whether Iraq on its own could present a threat to American security. Even if they had biological weapons, in a pre-9/11 world, we would have assumed that they had no means to deploy them against us. However, after 9/11, we had to assume that biologicals could get deployed against us clandestinely -- and Saddam had openly supported terrorist groups throughout the 1990s. If he had these weapons, he had the means to deliver them.

This is the critical point that gets lost when people talk about false and/or misleading intelligence. They forget that intelligence estimates are never, ever like courtroom indictments. They are, at best, educated estimates of enemy capability and intent. While misreading worst-case scenarios can cause policy errors, ignoring threats until a courtroom threshold of proof comes along causes 9/11, the USS Cole, and two bombed embassies in Africa.

In the case of Saddam's missiles, which certainly had the capability to threaten American forces and our allies, the pre-war intelligence proved mostly correct:

Postwar findings of the ISG confirm the Intelligence Community’s assessment that Iraq developed the Al Samud II and Al Fat’h (formerly Ababil- 100) missiles with procurements prohibited by UN sanctions, or subject to UN verification, and the missile ranges exceeded 150&m, in violation of UN prohibitions. The ISG found numerous instances where Iraq disregarded UN prohibitions and sought to improve its missile capabilities. The ISG found that Saddam did not consider ballistic missiles to be WMD and he never accepted the missile range restrictions imposed by the UN, although in late February 2003, he ultimately acquiesced to UN demands that the Al Samud II inventory be destroyed. Additionally, flight test data recovered by the ISG confirm that both the Al Samud II and the Al Fat’h had ranges in excess of 150~km. These findings support the Intelligence Community’s assessment that Iraq was developing and testing SRBMs which were capable of flying beyond the UN-administered 150~km range limit. The ISG’s interviews, site visits, and exploitation of documents indicate that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its Scud-type ballistic missiles in 1991. One Iraqi document, which had never been provided to the UN, showed the disposition, by serial number, of all 819 Scud missiles imported from Russia.
​

This shows rather clearly that Saddam continually and purposefully violated the missile restrictions of the cease-fire and the UN resolutions. These missiles on their own would have caused havoc in the region. However, combined with the biological efforts that the CIA and other intel services reported, they created a serious WMD threat. Even before 9/11, the US had over 40,000 military personnel in the region enforcing the sanctions on Iraq that our allies busily undermined, all of whom were deployed in areas where these missiles could have reached.

I'll continue to plow through these documents, but we can already see that the mainstream media has missed some significant details in its zeal to publish whatever will cause the greatest controversy.
Posted by Captain Ed at September 9, 2006 09:43 AM

 

[Bonnie]

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

Levin and Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, said Tenet told the committee last July that in 2002 he had complied with an administration request "to say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said" about the Saddam-terrorist link.

They said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the same day Bush gave a speech speaking of such a link, the CIA had sent a declassified letter to the committee saying it would be an "extreme step" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in attacking the United States.

They said Tenet acknowledged to the committee that subsequently issuing a statement that there was no inconsistency between the president's speech and the CIA viewpoint was "the wrong thing to do."

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the mistakes of prewar intelligence have long been known and "the additional views of the committee's Democrats are little more than a rehashing of the same unfounded allegations they've used for over three years."

The panel report is Phase II of an analysis of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The first phase, issued in July 2004, focused on the CIA's failings in its estimates of Iraq's weapons program.

The second phase had been delayed as Republicans and Democrats fought over what information should be declassified and how far the committee should delve into the question of whether policymakers may have manipulated intelligence to make the case for war.

Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he planned to ask for an investigation into the amount of information remaining classified. He said, "I am particularly concerned it appears that information may have been classified to shield individuals from accountability."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060909/ap_on_go_co/iraq_report

Rockefeller memo

Here is the full text of the memo from the office of Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa.) on setting a strategy for pursuing an independent investigation of pre-war White House intelligence dealings on Iraq.

We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows:

1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard.

For example, in addition to the President's State of the Union speech, the chairman [Sen. Pat Roberts] has agreed to look at the activities of the office of the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, as well as Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department.

The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and cosigns our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don't know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. [We can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.]

2) Assiduously prepare Democratic 'additional views' to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it.

In that regard we may have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims. We will contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry.

The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an Independent Commission [i.e., the Corzine Amendment.]

3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once.

The best time to do so will probably be next year, either:

A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report, thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public. Additional views on the interim report (1). The announcement of our independent investigation (2). And (3) additional views on the final investigation. Or:

B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue, we would attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the use of intelligence.

In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter footdragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman. We have independently submitted written requests to the DOD and we are preparing further independent requests for information.

SUMMARY: Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral preemptive war.

The approach outlined above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives.

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.

The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million "exploitable items" captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S.
intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq war.

The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

Nearly three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 50,000 of these 2 million "exploitable items" have been thoroughly examined. That's 2.5 percent. Despite the hard work of the individuals assigned to the "DOCEX" project, the process is not moving quickly enough, says Michael Tanji, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who helped lead the document exploitation effort for 18 months. "At this rate," he says, "if we continue to approach DOCEX in a linear fashion, our great-grandchildren will still be sorting through this stuff."

Most of the 50,000 translated documents relate directly to weapons of mass destruction programs and scientists, since David Kay and his Iraq Survey Group--who were among the first to analyze the finds--considered those items top priority. "At first, if it wasn't WMD, it wasn't translated. It wasn't exploited," says a former military intelligence officer who worked on the documents in Iraq.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/550kmbzd.asp

The Kerry Campaigner on the Republican Staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee
Some in the GOP ask: Which side are you on?


http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGMzMzk2Y2YxZjlkNWJmYTlhYTAyYWY4N2Q2NWQ2ODY=

By Byron York

As the Senate Intelligence Committee struggles to complete its investigation into prewar intelligence, some Republicans have become increasingly concerned that they are at a disadvantage in the bitter and partisan fight over what is known as “Phase Two” of the probe. “We don’t have a majority on the committee,” says one Hill Republican, noting that while the GOP, of course, maintains formal control of the committee — there are eight Republicans and seven Democrats — Republican lawmakers have lost effective control because two of their own, Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, sometimes side with Democrats.

Now, National Review Online has learned that a key Republican committee staffer in the politically charged prewar intelligence investigation is a veteran of the 2004 Kerry presidential campaign. Eric Rosenbach, hired by Sen. Hagel to work on prewar intelligence issues, came to the Senate after completing studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government under Rand Beers, a top foreign-policy adviser for Kerry. In Fall 2004, Rosenbach took three weeks to volunteer for the Kerry campaign in York County, Pennsylvania.

“Senator Hagel knew that he worked for Rand Beers,” Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry tells NRO. “He did not know that he had volunteered in the Kerry campaign.”

In 2004, while at the Kennedy School, Rosenbach worked on what is known as a Policy Analysis Exercise, or PAE, for the Kerry campaign. A number of students at the Kennedy School were doing similar things, and an article in the school’s Autumn 2004 bulletin explains the work Rosenbach, who earned an MPP, or Master of Public Policy degree, did for Kerry, through his adviser Beers:

For some students, working on a PAE for a campaign has the added bonus of making them feel like they’re a part of history in the making. Eric Rosenbach, MPP 2004, and Blake Mobley, MPP 2004, realized this when they worked on a PAE for Rand Beers that looks at how Kerry should handle postconflict reconstruction. Beers, national security advisor for Kerry’s campaign, taught a class at the Kennedy School in the spring with former Bush advisor Richard Clarke…

Rosenbach remembers one day in particular that stood out. “Blake and I were sitting in Rand’s office, watching Dick testify before the 9/11 Commission while Rand was checking over our final draft,” he said. “His testimony was pretty moving because he (Dick) apologized to the families of the victims of 9/11. Dick also specifically mentioned his close friendship with Rand. So imagine: Blake and I looking at each other, wide-eyed, as we watched Dick talk about Rand while he was reading our stuff!”

Later, Rosenbach was recommended to Hagel, according to spokesman Buttry, by Graham Allison, a professor at the Kennedy School — and another adviser to Kerry. “Graham said, ‘This is someone you need to take a look at,’“ Allison told Hagel, according to Buttry’s account.

Finally, Rosenbach is a co-author of “Defeating the Jihadists,” a 2004 report published by the liberal Century Foundation, in which he shared credit with Clarke, the White House counterterrorism official-turned-Bush-critic, and also with, among others, former Clinton White House official Roger Cressey, former Clinton White House official Steven Simon, former Clinton White House official William Wechsler, and former Clinton White House official Lee Wolosky.

According to the website PoliticalMoneyLine, the only political contribution Rosenbach has made was a $1,900 donation to Democratic congressional candidate Barend Samara, who in 2004 lost a hard-fought race for the House from New York’s 29th District.

There is no doubt that Rosenbach is highly qualified to work for the committee; Buttry points out that he is a former Fulbright scholar and Army intelligence-company commander who has studied at Harvard and Georgetown Law School. If Rosenbach had been hired by, say, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top-ranking Democrat on the committee, or next-in-line Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, no one would have viewed the appointment as at all unusual. But not on the GOP side. “This is an intensely political committee,” says one Senate Republican. “The whole track record of the committee is political.” In the us-versus-them world of the committee as it exists today, Rosenbach’s background of Democratic partisanship raises plenty of Republican eyebrows.

Meanwhile, the committee’s Phase Two investigation is creeping toward completion — or, perhaps, deadlock. According to several sources familiar with the work, the committee is making progress, but it is an uneven affair. Phase Two is made up of five parts, and some of them are close to completion, while others might never be finished.

Part one is an examination of the prewar intelligence itself. It is said to be nearly done, with both sides agreeing on the basic findings. In some ways, that has been a relatively easy job; the prewar intelligence was, after all, inaccurate. The committee is said to have found no surprises in that area.

Part two is an investigation of how the intelligence community used information provided by the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed Chalabi in the run-up to the war. This area is more contentious than the first, but the committee is said to have found essentially what the Robb-Silberman Commission found, that is, that information from the INC did not play a major role in the decision to go to war. The committee’s work on this issue is said to be nearly finished.

Part three concerns the administration’s prewar assessments of postwar Iraq, sometimes known as the “they didn’t greet us with flowers” investigation. This area is said to be substantially completed, but there are still disagreements about the wording of the findings.

Part four concerns the work of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. This area is virtually the sole project of Sen. Levin, who has been acutely interested in the work of the office’s former chief, Douglas Feith. Levin has accused Feith of distorting, exaggerating, inventing, or manipulating intelligence about the connections between Iraq and al Qaeda and about Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities — and then deceiving Congress about it. Committee chairman Pat Roberts has said his panel found no credible evidence to support Levin’s charges and referred the matter to the Pentagon’s inspector general for review. Now, nothing will be done in this area until the Pentagon gives its findings to the committee — which could take months.

Finally, part five concerns the public statements made by government officials in the lead-up to the war. This area is said to be a matter of such deep division and contention that it might never be completed. Originally, committee Democrats wanted to examine only the statements made by White House and administration officials, comparing those statements to available intelligence to determine whether they were exaggerated. But Roberts pointed out that many lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, had made statements before the war, too. For example, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy said, in September 2002, that “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” Why not examine statements like Kennedy’s, too? Roberts asked. Democrats resisted, especially when Roberts proposed that senators evaluate each statement on its substance without knowing the identity of the speaker. That course would have been fraught with danger for Democrats: What if they condemned one of their own? A standoff ensued, and it is not clear when, or if, it will be resolved.

So that is the status of Phase Two. At each step of the way, senators and staffers on the committee are operating in a far more partisan environment than in the past; the days when the committee was perhaps the most nonpartisan on Capitol Hill are long gone. That is why some Republicans were not terribly surprised to learn that Eric Rosenbach, the GOP staffer, had a plainly partisan background. They were just surprised to find which party it involved.

 

[Jennifer.Bush]

And another idiotic thing in that stupid article....



Their friggin quoting Saddam Hussein.
Yeah, he's saying weeeeeeeeeellll golly gee, I would never have anything to do with a terrorist group.......yuk, yuk, yuk......

Now there's a mans word we can f@@king trust......


Some people.......:duh3:

so i wasn't the only one thinking this uh?? wow americans get dumber day by day- the report is not even finish and people are ranting away-