9/11:Bin Laden sought Saddam's help but Iraq rebuffed him

[J-10]

Sept. 11 panel: Bin Laden sought Saddam's help but Iraq rebuffed him
09:51 AM EDT Jun 16
BY HOPE YEN

WASHINGTON (AP) - The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported Wednesday that Osama bin Laden met with a top Iraqi official in 1994 but found "no credible evidence" of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the United States.

In a report based on research and interviews by the commission staff, the panel said that bin Laden explored possible cooperation with Saddam even though he opposed the Iraqi leader's secular regime.

A senior Iraqi intelligence official reportedly met with bin Laden in 1994 in Sudan, the panel found, and bin Laden "is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded."

"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the report said. "Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaida and Iraq."

The panel's findings appear to contradict Vice President **** Cheney's assertion Monday that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida.

In making the case for war in Iraq, Bush administration officials frequently cited what they said were Saddam's decade-long contacts with al-Qaida operatives. They stopped short of claiming that Iraq was directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks but critics say Bush officials left that impression with the American public.

The commission's report was released at the beginning of the panel's final two-day hearing on the development of the Sept. 11 plot and the emergency response by the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. air defenses.

"We're going to talk about the evolution of al-Qaida and how they moved from one type of organization in the late 1980s to a more fast-acting, poisonous organization in the 1990s, more spread out and dispersed," Democratic commissioner Timothy Roemer said before the hearing.

"We'll be looking at the timeline as to whether or not we had an opportunity to deflect any of the airliners, and how decisions were made by the highest people in government," he said.

From (http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/040616/w061628.html)

[OB Kenobi]

http://www.the44.net/blog/No%20Blood%20For%20Oil.jpg

[ßå$tĮТHÏ¿ð]

Hmmm there was a thread a while ago were everyone was telling me that there "was a link and they had proof" ;)

[2Sheds_Jackson]

WTF is this garbage?

This report mirrors exactly what the Bush administration said was the connection between UBL & Saddam...and the press somehow spins it as a crushing defeat for Bush?

Bush never said Saddam was directly involved in 9/11. The report confirms that.

Cheney said they had long established, decade long ties. The report confirms that.

Seems that even if they decided not to work together, Saddam was not cooperating with the UN effort to get UBL. If UBL and Saddam were not on the same team, why did Saddam not turn him in to the UN or have him killed himself? Saddam had no problem killing the rest of his enemies (including an attempt to kill Bush 41 during a visit to Kuwait).

Seems to be a pretty friendly relationship, even if they did not directly work together..sort of a "gentlemen's agreement" between to a-holes who were certainly not gentlemen.

[Kitsune]

2sheds jackson:

These "Al Qaeda connection" of Saddams government is a joke. And a good example how the Bush government uses propaganda for their ends. They take some vague links and produce another "reason" to invade Iraq.

Have you forgotten that the US had "long established, decade long ties" to Osama, too? He was supported, helped and registered as an CIA asset. And what does that prove? That the US are behind 9/11? Hardly.
And the same goes for Iraq. Fact is that Saddam was THE protection shield against religious fanaticsm and fundamentalism in Iraq. That may be about the only positive thing one can say about him. But it is the truth nontheless. So better stick with the WMD justification.

[J-10]

Have you forgotten that the US had "long established, decade long ties" to Osama, too? He was supported, helped and registered as an CIA asset...

:lol: CIA p-)

[Kitsune]

Yeah, thats right. Central Intelligence Agency. No joke intended.

[Operation Ivy]

blah blah america sucks :roll:

[2Sheds_Jackson]

Let's not change the subject & turn this into another tiresome "well OK but just look at what the USA did at another place and time" thread. The two points are unrelated.

UBL was marked of the US's Christmas card list as soon as he began fighting against, instead of with us. Much like Chalabi - you take your chances with human resources.

UBL & Saddam's alleged cooperation on 9/11 was never the primary reason for the Iraq invasion.

If UBL had approached anybody on the UN Security council in 2000, he would have been arrested and tried as an international terrorist...because he was their enemy.

But he routinely talked with Saddam, who did not turn him in, and who did not attempt to kill him. Thus, are we to conclude that the two are enemies or friends? Saddam killed his enemies, so therefore one must conclude that they are friends. And by not turning him in, or alerting the UN Saddam helps his cause.

And let us not forget that Abu al-Zarqawi fled into Iraq after he was wounded in Afghanistan and was given safe harbor and medical treatment by Saddam. That's some pretty close cooperation for enemies.

[Supes]

HAs anybody had of Ansar al Islam?

[scm77]

I have. But that doesn't count as a terrorist organization. ;)

[Kitsune]

@2Sheds_jackson:


If UBL had approached anybody on the UN Security council in 2000, he would have been arrested and tried as an international terrorist...because he was their enemy.

Well, just after GWI UBL offered to lead an muslim volunteer brigade into Iraq to topple Saddam.




But he routinely talked with Saddam, who did not turn him in, and who did not attempt to kill him. Thus, are we to conclude that the two are enemies or friends? Saddam killed his enemies, so therefore one must conclude that they are friends. And by not turning him in, or alerting the UN Saddam helps his cause.
Oh come on. You make that sound as if the two met each other in person on a regulary basis. UBL most probably did not even set foot on Iraqi soil. As far as "Saddam killing him or turning him in" is concerned...the whole US with all their might has not achieved this trick so far, remember? And Saddam had other problems...he had to fight for his control of Iraq in the early nineties (with the Shiits revolting), in the late nineties he was so weak, that he lost control of most of the Kurdish settled north of Iraq. He was hardly in the position to kill UBL at his leisure.

[chauncy republicans]

Let's not change the subject & turn this into another tiresome "well OK but just look at what the USA did at another place and time" thread. The two points are unrelated.
You mean, let's not look back on history, and try and learn something from it? :slap:

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

HAs anybody had of Ansar al Islam?
Yes I have and they were no friend of Saddam I believe he was on their very long death list.

Ansar al-Islam fi Kurdistan (Supporters of Islam in Kurdistan) is one of a number of Sunni Islamist groups based in the Kurdish-controlled northern provinces of Iraq. Its bases are in and around the villages of Biyara and Tawela, which lie northeast of the town of Halabja in the Hawraman region of Sulaimaniya province bordering Iran.

[5jumpchump]

Iraqis are making 6 to 7 times their income now a days . I don't think anyone cares .

[seruriermarshal]

SADDAM AND OSAMA

June 17, 2004 -- To hear much of the news reporting yesterday, you'd think a national 9/11 Commission report had blown a giant hole in the Bush administra tion's rationale for toppling Saddam Hussein.
The commission did no such thing.

But that didn't stop congressional Democrats ?led by presumptive presidential nominee John Kerry ?from renewing their charges that the administration "misled America" about Saddam Hussein's ties to Osama bin Laden.

Again, that's not what the report says.

And even if it did, a Saddam-Osama alliance is not why America opened a front in Iraq as part of the War on Terror.

The staff report, re leased as part of yes terday's final public hearings, says there was no evident connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.

In fact, the Bush administration has never said there was.



The report also says the commission has "no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

Again, the administration never said there was.

But the report does say that bin Laden actively sought to work with Saddam, through contacts arranged by the Sudanese government.

Indeed, it says, "a senior Iraqi intelligence office reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting bin Laden in 1994." Further, it says, "contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden returned to Afghanistan."

The report claims that those contacts "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." But that's far from a flat-out "no ties exist."

And, again, the administration has alleged only that Saddam and al Qaeda maintained contacts that were more than casual or inconsequential, none of which is denied in the commission report.

In fact, as Stephen Hayes writes in The Weekly Standard, the conventional wisdom in Washington long before George W. Bush took office was that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were partners in terrorism.

Two Clinton-administration stalwarts, Attorney General Janet Reno and U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, brought an indictment against bin Laden and a deputy, Mohammed Atef, in 1998 ?charging that Saddam and Osama "reached an understanding . . . that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."

Yes, those allegations were eventually dropped from the indictment. These likely means they couldn't have been proven in a court of law under federal rules of evidence ?not necessarily that they were baseless to begin with.

(This underscores the dangers of treating global terrorism in the age of suitcase nukes as a legal ?not a military ?matter, as candidate Kerry proposes.)

Meanwhile, back in 1999, ABC News reported that Saddam had offered bin Laden asylum, citing their "long relationship" and a December 1998 meeting in Afghanistan between Osama and Iraqi intelligence chief Faruq Hijazi.

That same year, the Congressional Research Service reported that if Saddam Hussein "decide[s] to use terrorists to attack the continental United States, [he] would likely turn to bin Laden's al Qaeda," which was then recruiting "Iraqi chemical weapons experts."

Did everyone mislead America?

If, in fact, the nation was misled, the misleading began long before George W. Bush entered the White House.

But what if substantive Osama-Saddam ties were for real? Just because the Kean commission hasn't yet found any evidence does not mean it doesn't exist.

As recently as Monday, Vice President **** Cheney said that Saddam "had long-established ties with al Qaeda" ?a statement his spokesman reiterated again yesterday.

Further details can be found in Richard Miniter's vastly illuminating column on the opposite page.

In other words, the Kean commission ? whose blatantly partisan Bush-bashing has been manifest from the get-go ?is hardly the final word on the subject.

But the commission report does offer a clear rejoinder to those like Sen. Bob Graham ?a possible Kerry vice presidential pick ?who charge that the war in Iraq somehow constituted a distraction from the War on Terror.

Many seem to have forgotten that the first U.S. military action after 9/11 was to invade Afghanistan and destroy its Taliban government, targeting bin Laden strongholds ?and capturing many of his top aides ?in the process.

As a result, the report says, "al Qaeda's funding has decreased significantly. The arrests or deaths of several important financial facilitators have decreased the amount of money al Qaeda has raised and increased the costs and difficulty or raising and moving that money."

Moreover, though the organization re mains dangerous, it today has "a greatly weakened central organization."

Still, President Bush realized ?as John Kerry, the Democrats and the Kean commission clearly do not ?that the war on terrorism is not just about seeking revenge against the perpetrators of 9/11.

It's about neutralizing radical Islam's fundamental challenge to Western civilization ?fighting to win a war that was imposed on the West by evil men in the service of a depraved ideology.

The path to victory is not clear, but the alternative is one, two, many 9/11's ?each more horrific than its predecessor.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Why is that so hard to understand?



From (http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/23190.htm)

[seruriermarshal]

More Lies about the Saddam-Osama Connection

By Joel Mowbray
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 17, 2004

As newspaper headlines are sure to scream in page one, above-the-fold stories, the 9/11 commission found "no credible evidence" that Saddam played a role in the terrorist attack.

But what you won't hear is that Saddam's possible role in 9/11 had little to do with the case for war in Iraq.

Quite simply, war was waged in Iraq to prevent another 9/11. Apparently, this is too much nuance for most of the media to handle.

Did the administration make Iraq's substantial terrorist ties, including to al Qaeda, one of the primary reasons for going to war? Of course. But did the administration try to pin 9/11 on Saddam? No.

Yet the casual reader probably couldn't glean that from the initial media reaction to the commission's interim report.

Nor could the casual reader discern that the "news" on Iraq was but one paragraph in a 12-page document.

******* newswire, the outlet where al Qaeda is merely an "extremist network," ****ounced in its headline, "Panel says no signs on Iraq, Qaeda link." The headline writer, though, must have missed the second paragraph, which acknowledged that the commission found that bin Laden himself had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in 1994.

The Associated Press was no better, and in fact, played a more overtly political hand. Its lead sentence stated that the commission's report was "[b]luntly contradicting the Bush administration." Except that it wasn't.

The primary "contradiction" contained in the report is that the panel has a different view of the credibility of the evidence suggesting a meeting between 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. Vice President Cheney has presented this meeting as a possibility, but he never claimed that it was ironclad.

The AP headline, though, was even more troubling. It stated that the commission found that "Iraq Rebuffed al Qaeda." But that's simply not the case. The report failed to find evidence that the 1994 meeting produced substantial follow-up, but that is a far cry from a "rebuff."

Obviously, if the administration had made the case for war based on Saddam actively supporting 9/11, the media would be pulling those quotes. Which explains why the media instead had to distort the administration's words.

Exhibit number one is Vice President **** Cheney's comment Monday that Saddam had "long-established ties" to al Qaeda. The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin, for example, claimed that Cheney's statement was "at odds" with the commission report.

But the commission report noted that Saddam didn't play a significant role in 9/11, not that he didn't have "long-established ties" to al Qaeda. That' s not an unimportant distinction.

Explains 9/11 Commission spokesman Jonathan Stull, "The report doesn't close the book on connections between Iraq and al Qaeda." And how could it, with only one paragraph on the issue?

More important, it couldn't have "closed the book," because Saddam did have "long-established ties" to al Qaeda. The best case to date, in fact, has been made by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard in his new book, "The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America."

Far from some crackpot conspiracy theorist, Hayes is a cautious, seasoned journalist who is careful to add caveats about each piece of evidence. Even though, as he is quick to point out, a number of the stories and events may turn out not to be true, the sheer volume of ties-in terms of both depth and breadth-between Iraq and al Qaeda should leave little doubt that this was a determined, ongoing relationship.

"The Connection" lives up to its title in exploring Saddam's support for and sheltering of one of the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing, as well as extensive meetings between various Iraqi intelligence officials and bin Laden over the years. And recent events serve to
corroborate Hayes' reporting on Zarqawi's substantial Iraqi ties.

Hayes even documents evidence suggesting an agreement for Iraq to aid al Qaeda in developing WMD. The danger is obvious: stockpiles or no, no one disputes Saddam's WMD know-how.

With heaps of evidence documenting at least a substantial relationship, the question becomes: what more do the media need? A photograph of a Saddam-bin Laden tea party?





From (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13822)

[n.ignomo]

What about Pakistan ?

[afrographX]

I think UBL acted concerning Sadam Hussein exactly after the same principle as the US did in the fight against communism and now against al-quaeda. 'The nemy of my enemy is my friend' UBL and Hussein didn't really had much in common concerning their ideology. But both were enemies of the most powerfull nation on this planet. Just natural that UBL spoke with Saddam and that Saddam didn't handed him over to the UN.

[Yosy]

I'm anti-Bush but now I'll just analize the facts available that justified the 3 weeks war:


a) Saddam had WMDS
b) Saddam was working with Al-Qaeda

The first reason was more intended to the international public opinion IMHO, whilst the second was more for US people.

UN weapons inspectors sent to Iraq said that no WMDs or programs to develop them were found. Some critics said that the WMDs are now in Syria: this is extremly unlikely: what country would want to recieve sutch a "hot" item?
A year passed since the invasion and no WMDs were found. Conclusion: no WMDs exist.

To this day, there aren't proofs of any Saddam/Al-Qaeda connection. The 9/11 Commisson proved that the connection doesn't exist.

Conclusion: the war was unjust and illegal.

[afrographX]

I'm anti-Bush but now I'll just analize the facts available that justified the 3 weeks war:


a) Saddam had WMDS
b) Saddam was working with Al-Qaeda

The first reason was more intended to the international public opinion IMHO, whilst the second was more for US people.

UN weapons inspectors sent to Iraq said that no WMDs or programs to develop them were found. Some critics said that the WMDs are now in Syria: this is extremly unlikely: what country would want to recieve sutch a "hot" item?
A year passed since the invasion and no WMDs were found. Conclusion: no WMDs exist.

To this day, there aren't proofs of any Saddam/Al-Qaeda connection. The 9/11 Commisson proved that the connection doesn't exist.

Conclusion: the war was unjust and illegal.

totally agree

[n4292936]

UBL & Saddam's alleged cooperation on 9/11 was never the primary reason for the Iraq invasion.

If UBL had approached anybody on the UN Security council in 2000, he would have been arrested and tried as an international terrorist...because he was their enemy.


And let us not forget that Abu al-Zarqawi fled into Iraq after he was wounded in Afghanistan and was given safe harbor and medical treatment by Saddam. That's some pretty close cooperation for enemies.
everyone is right, more or less, that the Iraq AQ link wasnt the main reason for going to war. His possesion of WMDs was, which as we all know has yet to be proven. The Bush admin was making their case particularly compelling by trying to highlight the Iraq- AQ connection and by asserting that it was a cooperative and collaborative one (thereby raising the spectre of tech transfer). This was no such relationship prior to or during Gulf War1 (in fact it was the opposite), and no collaborative ties have yet to be proven. Thus, because his conventional weapons were not a threat to the US, and because he had no intercontinental delivery system for him WMDs, which its begining to look like he didnt have, and because there was no collaborative relationship between AQ and Iraq to deliver those nonexistent weapons by terrorist means - their was no theat to the US and the entire war was built on false premises. Whether or not that was deliberate is another matter entirely but as it stands the bottom has fallen out from under any presumptive case for war.
I think a case for intentional misdirection can be made, especially after the forged document alledgedly showing that saddam had tried to acquire uranium from Nigeria came forward. The CIA cleared the document, and yet its authenticity was later proved to be faked - was the CIA complicit or just inept?
That saddam is not in power is absolutely a good thing, I would not wish it otherwise, nor do I think that we should pull out right now - but rates of terrorist incidents have grown, the US is hated more now than ever before, and AQ and other extremist groups have therefore found it that much easier to recruit. America, its interests abroad, and the world at large are less safe because of the policies Bush has implimented.

[fdt]

Good to see U alive and kicking... :D

[seruriermarshal]

Iraq & al Qaeda

The 9/11 Commission raises more questions than it answers.



The 9/11 Commission's staff has come down decidedly on the side of the naysayers about operational ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. This development is already being met with unbridled joy by opponents of the Iraq war, who have been carping for days about recent statements by President George W. Bush and Vice President **** Cheney that reaffirmed the deposed Iraqi regime's promotion of terror.

The celebration is premature. The commission's cursory treatment of so salient a national question as whether al Qaeda and Iraq confederated is puzzling. Given that the panel had three hours for Richard Clarke, one might have hoped for more than three minutes on Iraq. More to the point, though, the staff statements released Wednesday — which seemed to be contradicted by testimony at the public hearing within minutes of their publication — raise more questions than they answer, about both matters the staff chose to address and some it strangely opted to omit.

The staff's sweeping conclusion is found in its Statement No. 15 ("Overview of the Enemy"), which states:


Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

Just taken on its own terms, this paragraph is both internally inconsistent and ambiguously worded. First, it cannot be true both that the Sudanese arranged contacts between Iraq and bin Laden and that no "ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." If the first proposition is so, then the "[t]wo senior Bin Laden associates" who are the sources of the second are either lying or misinformed.

In light of the number of elementary things the commission staff tells us its investigation has been unable to clarify (for example, in the very next sentence after the Iraq paragraph, the staff explains that the question whether al Qaeda had any connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the 1995 plot to blow U.S. airliners out of the sky "remains a matter of substantial uncertainty"), it is fair to conclude that these two senior bin Laden associates may not be the most cooperative, reliable fellows in town regarding what bin Laden was actually up to. Moreover, we know from press reports and the administration's own statements about the many al Qaeda operatives it has captured since 9/11 that the government is talking to more than just two of bin Laden's top operatives. That begs the questions: Have we really only asked two of them about Iraq? If not, what did the other detainees say?



Inconvenient Facts
The staff's back-of-the-hand summary also strangely elides mention of another significant matter — but one that did not escape the attention of Commissioner Fred Fielding, who raised it with a panel of law-enforcement witnesses right after noting the staff's conclusion that there was "no credible evidence" of cooperation. It is the little-discussed original indictment of bin Laden, obtained by the Justice Department in spring 1998 — several weeks before the embassy bombings and at a time when the government thought it would be prudent to have charges filed in the event an opportunity arose overseas to apprehend bin Laden. Paragraph 4 of that very short indictment reads:

Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, 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.
(Emphasis added.) This allegation has always been inconvenient for the "absolutely no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda" club. (Richard Clarke, a charter member, handles the problem in his book by limiting the 1998 indictment to a fleeting mention and assiduously avoiding any description of what the indictment actually says.)

It remains inconvenient. As testimony at the commission's public hearing Wednesday revealed, the allegation in the 1998 indictment stems primarily from information provided by the key accomplice witness at the embassy bombing trial, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl. Al-Fadl told agents that when al Qaeda was headquartered in the Sudan in the early-to-mid-1990s, he understood an agreement to have been struck under which the jihadists would put aside their antipathy for Saddam and explore ways of working together with Iraq, particularly regarding weapons production.

On al Qaeda's end, al-Fadl understood the liaison for Iraq relations to be an Iraqi named Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. "Abu Hajer al Iraqi"), one of bin Laden's closest friends. (There will be a bit more to say later about Salim, who, it bears mention, was convicted in New York last year for maiming a prison guard in an escape attempt while awaiting trial for bombing the embassies.) After the embassies were destroyed, the government's case, naturally, was radically altered to focus on the attacks that killed over 250 people, and the Iraq allegation was not included in the superseding indictment. But, as the hearing testimony made clear, the government has never retracted the allegation.

Neither have other important assertions been retracted, including those by CIA Director George Tenet. As journalist Stephen Hayes reiterated earlier this month, Tenet, on October 7, 2002, wrote a letter to Congress, which asserted:

Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank. We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.
Tenet, as Hayes elaborated, has never backed away from these assessments, reaffirming them in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee as recently as March 9, 2004.
Is the commission staff saying that the CIA director has provided faulty information to Congress? That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine.) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."


Kabul...Baghdad...
The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden's ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.

I would point out, moreover, that al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting — you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?

Of course, we may yet find that Saddam was a participant in the specific 9/11 plot. In that regard, the commission staff's report is perplexing, and, again, raises — or flat omits — many more questions than it resolves.


Don't Forget Shakir
For one thing, the staff has now addressed the crucial January 2000 Malaysia planning session in a few of its statements. As I have previously recounted, this was the three-day meeting at which Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, eventual hijackers of Flight 77 (the one that hit the Pentagon), met with other key 9/11 planners. The staff's latest report, Statement Number 16 ("Outline of the 9/11 Plot"), even takes time to describe how the conspirators were hosted in Kuala Lampur by members of a Qaeda-affiliated terror group, Jemaah Islamiah. But the staff does not mention, let alone explain, let alone explain away, that al Midhar was escorted to the meeting by Ahmed Hikmat Shakir.

Shakir is the Iraqi who got his job as an airport greeter through the Iraqi embassy, which controlled his work schedule. He is the man who left that job right after the Malaysia meeting; who was found in Qatar six days after 9/11 with contact information for al Qaeda heavyweights — including bin Laden's aforementioned friend, Salim — and who was later detained in Jordan but released only after special pleading from Saddam's regime, and only after intelligence agents concluded that he seemed to have sophisticated counter-interrogation training. Shakir is also the Iraqi who now appears, based on records seized since the regime's fall, to have been all along an officer in Saddam's Fedayeen.

Does all this amount to proof of participation in the 9/11 plot? Well, in any prosecutor's office it would be a pretty good start. And if the commission staff was going to get into this area of Iraqi connections to al Qaeda at all, what conceivable good reason is there for avoiding any discussion whatsoever of Shakir? At least tell us why he is not worth mentioning.


Prague Problem
One thing the staff evidently thought it was laying to rest was the other niggling matter of whether 9/11 major domo Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani in Prague in April 2001. The staff's conclusion is that the meeting is a fiction. To say its reasoning is less than satisfying would be a gross understatement. Here's the pertinent conclusion, also found in Statement Number 16:

We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9 [2001]. Based on the evidence available — including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting — we do not believe that such a meeting occurred. The FBI's investigation places him in Virginia as of April 4, as evidenced by this bank surveillance camera shot of Atta withdrawing $8,000 from his account. Atta was back in Florida by April 11, if not before. Indeed, investigation has established that, on April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call Florida phone numbers from cell sites within Florida. We have seen no evidence that Atta ventured overseas again or re-entered the United States before July, when he traveled to Spain under his true name and back under his true name.
This is ground, again, that I've recently covered. To rehearse: Czech intelligence has alleged that Atta was seen in Prague on April 8 or 9, 2001. Atta had withdrawn $8,000 cash from a bank in Virginia on April 4 and was not eyeballed again by a witness until one week later, on April 11. The new detail added by the staff is that Atta's cell phone was used in Florida on three days (April 6, 9 and 10) during that time frame. Does this tend to show he was in Florida rather than Prague? It could, but not very convincingly. Telling us Atta's cell phone was used is not the same as telling us Atta used the cell phone.

Atta almost certainly would not have been able to use the cell phone overseas, so it would have been foolish to tote it along to the Czech Republic — especially if he was traveling clandestinely (as the large cash withdrawal suggests). He would have left it behind. Atta, moreover, had a roommate (and fellow hijacker), Marwan al-Shehhi. It is certainly possible that Shehhi — whom the staff places in Florida during April 2001 — could have used Atta's cell phone during that time.

Is it possible that Atta was in Florida rather than Prague? Of course it is. But the known evidence militates strongly against that conclusion: an eyewitness puts Atta in Prague, meeting with al-Ani; we know Atta was a "Hamburg student" and represented himself as such in a visa application; it has been reported that the Czechs have al-Ani's appointment calendar and it says he was scheduled to meet on the critical day with a "Hamburg student"; and we know for certain that Atta was in Prague under very suspicious circumstances twice in a matter of days (May 30 and June 2, 2000) during a time the Czechs and Western intelligence services feared that Saddam, through al-Ani, might be reviving a plot to use Islamic extremists to bomb Radio Free Europe (a plot the State Department acknowledged in its annual global terror report notwithstanding that the commission staff apparently did not think the incident merited mention).

I am perfectly prepared to accept the staff's conclusion about Atta not being in Prague — if the commission provides a convincing, thoughtful explanation, which is going to have to get a whole lot better than a cell-phone record.

What is the staff's reason for rejecting the eyewitness identification? Is the "Hamburg student" entry bogus? Since the staff is purporting to provide a comprehensive explanation of the 9/11 plot — the origins of which it traces back to 1999 — what is their explanation for what Atta was doing in Prague in 2000? Why, when the staff went into minute detail about the travels of other hijackers (even when it conceded it did not know the relevance of those trips), was Atta's trip to Prague not worthy of even a passing mention? Why was it so important for Atta to be in Prague on May 30, 2000 that he couldn't delay for one day, until May 31, when his visa would have been ready? Why was it so important for him to be in Prague on May 30 that he opted to go despite the fact that, without a visa, he could not leave the airport terminal? How did he happen to find the spot in the terminal where surveillance cameras would not capture him for nearly six hours? Why did he go back again on June 2? Was he meeting with al-Ani? If so, why would it be important for him to see al-Ani right before entering the United States in June 2000? And jumping ahead to 2001, if Atta wasn't using cash to travel anonymously, what did he do with the $8000 he suddenly withdrew before disappearing on April 4? If his cell phone was used in Florida between April 4 and April 11, what follow-up investigation has been done about that by the 9/11 Commission? By the FBI? By anybody? Whom was the cell phone used to call? Do any of those people remember speaking to Atta at that time? Perhaps someone would remember speaking with the ringleader of the most infamous attack in the history of the United States if he had called to chat, no?

Are these questions important to answer? You be the judge. According to the 9/11 Commission staff report, bin Laden originally pressed the operational supervisor of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), "that the attacks occur as early as mid-2000," even though bin Laden "recognized that Atta and the other pilots had only just arrived in the United States to begin their flight training[.]" Well I'll be darned: mid-2000 is exactly when Atta made his two frenetic trips to Prague immediately before heading to the United States to begin that flight training.

The commission staff next says, "[i]n 2001, Bin Laden apparently pressured KSM twice more for an earlier date. According to KSM, Bin Laden first requested a date of May 12, 2001," and then proposed a date in June or July. Well, what do you know: all those dates are only weeks after Atta may have had some reason to drop everything and secretly run to Prague for a meeting with al-Ani.
Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is an NRO contributor.


From (http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406170840.asp)

http://www.tortlaw.com/images/Salman%20Pak%20terror%20facility.jpg