harry hope

Senator Barbara Boxer of California produced a government map from
late 2001 on which the administration identified 45 ''countries where
Al Qaeda has operated'' -- but Iraq was not among them.

Boxer introduced the map into the Congressional Record at a hearing at
which Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz testified.

Wolfowitz did not respond at the hearing, and the State Department did
not respond to questions about the map.

Greg Thielmann, the director of the strategic, proliferation, and
military affairs division in the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research until last September, was charged by Bush
officials with determining where Al Qaeda might acquire expertise and
materials for weapons of mass destruction.

''Based on the terrorism experts I met with during my period of
government, I never heard anyone make the claim there was a
significant tie between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein,'' he said.

The Bush administration, he added, was ''misleading the public in
implying there was a close connection.''

From The Boston Globe, 8/3/03:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/215/nation/Questions_grow_over_Iraq_links_to_QaedaP.shtml

Questions grow over Iraq links to Qaeda

By Peter S. Canellos and Bryan Bender, Globe Staff and Globe

WASHINGTON --

Shortly after his now-discredited report that Saddam Hussein was
seeking to buy uranium in Africa, President Bush asserted in his State
of the Union address that ''evidence from intelligence sources, secret
conversations, and statements by people now in custody reveal that
Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al
Qaeda.''

The link between Hussein and Al Qaeda was a component of Bush's larger
assertion that Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States --
that ''secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his
hidden weapons to terrorists.''

But a review of the White House's statements and interviews with
current and former intelligence officials indicate that the assertion
was extrapolated from nuggets of intelligence, some tantalizing but
unproven, some subsequently disproved, and some considered suspect
even at the time the administration was making its case for war.

Unconfirmed reports -- such as a Czech assertion of a meeting in
Prague between Sept. 11 terrorist Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent, as
well as a captured Al Qaeda member's assertion that Iraq had provided
chemical weapons training to Al Qaeda members -- were presented as
facts at various points by Bush and Vice President **** Cheney.

''I know this,'' Cheney said on Nov. 14, 2001, when asked on the
television news show ''60 Minutes II'' about the alleged Atta meeting
with a Hussein aide.

''In Prague in April of this year, as well as earlier . . .''

The following March, Cheney acknowledged the White House was still
working to ''nail down'' the Atta connection, although national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice depicted it last September as part
of ''a picture that is emerging that there may well have been contacts
between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime.''

Last week, congressional investigators declared in their major report
on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that after tracing Atta's
movements for two years, including trips made under all known aliases,
there was no evidence of the Prague meeting.

A former intelligence official in the Bush administration told the
Globe the CIA obtained evidence soon after the Czech report that the
Iraqi agent was elsewhere at the time of the purported meeting.

''The CIA had proof that Iraqi guy was not in Prague at the time,''
said the official, who asked not to be named. ''The mystery here is
why did the CIA allow that story to live when it could disprove it
with hard information.''

The administration now says the justification for Bush's reference in
the State of the Union Address was intelligence showing that Abu
Mussab Zarqawi, a terrorist associated with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden, operated out of Baghdad after coming to the Iraqi capital to
receive medical treatment last year.

Intelligence agencies contend Zarqawi recruited a terror cell in
Baghdad and helped engineer the killing of State Department official
Lawrence Foley in Jordan last October.

The administration does not contend it has evidence of ties between
Zarqawi and the Iraqi government.

Instead, Bush's statement that Hussein ''aids and protects'' known Al
Qaeda operatives is based on the assumption that Hussein's police
would have to know the comings and goings of a terrorist, a point
emphasized by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the months
leading up to the war.

But two senior intelligence officials who asked that their names not
be used said they were never convinced that Hussein knew Zarqawi's
whereabouts, noting that some stretches of Iraq's borders are
notoriously porous.

And they said other countries' intelligence agencies have questioned
the extent of the link between Zarqawi and Al Qaeda, suggesting he is
an Al Qaeda associate but not a member.

Ten days ago, Cheney offered a forceful defense of the
administration's case for war, intended to quell growing criticism
about the discredited uranium report.

But he surprised many political leaders by making no mention of a link
between Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Cheney's office declined to explain the omission.

Mike Anton, spokesman for the National Security Council, said Bush
never declared an ''alliance'' between Hussein and Al Qaeda, only
contacts.

''It's not an alliance,'' Anton said.

''It was midlevel contacts, in some cases high-level contacts, going
back a decade. That's a fact. No one's ever debunked it.''

Indeed, intelligence agencies tracked contacts between Iraqi agents
and Al Qaeda agents in the '90s in Sudan and Afghanistan, where bin
Laden is believed to have met with Farouk Hijazi, head of Iraqi
intelligence.

But current and former intelligence specialists caution that such
meetings occur just as often between enemies as friends.

Spies frequently make contact with rogue groups to size up their
intentions, gauge their strength, or try to infiltrate their ranks,
they said.

The United States sometimes seeks such contacts, they said.

''While there have been a number of promising intelligence leads
hinting at possible meetings between Al Qaeda members and elements of
the former Baghdad regime, nothing has been yet shown demonstrating
that these potential contacts were historically any more significant
than the same level of communication maintained between Osama bin
Laden and ruling elements in a number of Iraq's Persian Gulf
neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Qatar, and Kuwait,''
said Evan Kohlman, senior terrorism ****yst at the Investigative
Project, a Washington think tank credited with compiling the largest
archive on Muslim militants.

Last week, several prominent Democratic senators invoked the alleged
link between Hussein and Al Qaeda as part of an administration pattern
of inflating the case for war.

Senator Barbara Boxer of California produced a government map from
late 2001 on which the administration identified 45 ''countries where
Al Qaeda has operated'' -- but Iraq was not among them.

Boxer introduced the map into the Congressional Record at a hearing at
which Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz testified.

Wolfowitz did not respond at the hearing, and the State Department did
not respond to questions about the map.

Senator Russell Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said, ''Even though
they were selling us something else -- selling us an invasion and
occupation of a major Middle Eastern country even though intelligence
did not reveal solid ties to Al Qaeda -- the administration
incorporated references to Al Qaeda in its hard sell.''

Some former intelligence officials are even more critical.

Greg Thielmann, the director of the strategic, proliferation, and
military affairs division in the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research until last September, was charged by Bush
officials with determining where Al Qaeda might acquire expertise and
materials for weapons of mass destruction.

''Based on the terrorism experts I met with during my period of
government, I never heard anyone make the claim there was a
significant tie between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein,'' he said.

The Bush administration, he added, was ''misleading the public in
implying there was a close connection.''

Daniel Benjamin, who directed counterterrorism efforts on the National
Security Council in the Clinton administration, said:

''No one disputes that there have been contacts over the years. In
that part of the America-hating universe, contacts happen. But that's
still a long way from suggesting that they were really working
together.''

In 1998, Benjamin said, he was part of a National Security Council
exercise aimed at critically examining the CIA's assessment that Al
Qaeda would not team up with Iraq.

''This was a red-team effort,'' he said.

''We looked at this as an opportunity to disprove the conventional
wisdom, and basically we came to the conclusion that the CIA had this
one right.''

Bush, when asked at his news conference last week whether the
administration was amassing proof of the alleged link between Hussein
and Al Qaeda, said it was examining ''literally miles of do***ents.''

''And it's just going to take a while, and I'm confident the truth
will come out,'' Bush said.

''And there is no doubt in my mind . . . that Saddam Hussein was a
threat to United States security, and a threat to peace in the
region.''

But some current and former intelligence officials say whatever the
ultimate verdict on the link between Hussein and Al Qaeda, the
administration erred in presenting raw intelligence as part of an
argument for its own policy rather than as a subject for ****ysis.

In some cases, officials did not provide a context for the material.

For instance, they said, only in the rarest instances did an
administration official refer to a large amount of evidence that
Hussein and bin Laden were on bad terms and therefore unlikely to join
forces.

''In my judgment, Saddam assessed Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as a
threat rather than a potential partner to be exploited to attack the
United States,'' said Judith Yaphe, who worked on counterterrorism at
the CIA for three years, specializing in Iraq during the
administration of George H.W. Bush.

''Bin Laden wanted to attack Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990
rather than have the Saudi government depend on foreign military
forces.''

In other cases, current and former intelligence officials said, the
administration presented promising leads as fact.

During his presentation of the US case for war before the United
Nations on Feb. 5, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said one
captured ''senior terrorist operative'' from the high ranks of Al
Qaeda reported that the terror network had sought training in
''chemical or biological weapons'' from Iraq in 2000, and that the Al
Qaeda agent charged with making contact with Iraq declared his mission
a success.

Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former chief of counterterrorism
operations and ****ysis, said the allegation was intriguing but
remains unproven.

''We know this guy said it,'' said Cannistraro, but ''the question is
where it would have happened.''

But by Feb. 6, when Bush followed Powell's presentation with comments
of his own, the captured operative's account was presented as fact.

''Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct, and continuing ties to
terrorist networks,'' the president declared. ''Senior members of
Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda have met at least eight times since
the early 1990s. . . . Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical
and biological weapons training.''

__________________________________________________ _____

Curses! Ge****e's been caught with lyin' ass hangin' out again.

Harry