Pentagon Attempts To Memory Hole New Report That Dismisses Al Qaeda-Saddam link
Cancels plan for broad public release of report that debunks Neocon lie

Steve Watson
Infowars. net
Thursday, March 13, 2008


Related: Neocon Lie Finally Debunked: Osama Not in Cahoots with Saddam

The Pentagon has blocked the scheduled release of a definitive report that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The report, which is based on 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces, was due to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website late yesterday, and was to be followed up by a background briefing with the authors. However, the report will now only be made available to those in the media who request it.

Of course, given that the mainstream media is more concerned with the myspace page of the Spitzer hooker than iron clad proof that the Bush administration lied its way into a still ongoing war, we are unlikely to hear much more about this report.

Asked why the report, which was produced by a federally-funded think tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses, would not be posted online and could not be emailed, the spokesman for Joint Forces Command said: "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."

Another Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive.", reported ABC.

Translation: With the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war approaching on March 19, and the White House attempting to hold support for a continued large U.S. troop presence there, those who have not yet realized they were monumentally deceived by their own government on this issue may finally wake up to the truth.

A reminder of the lies that took the country to war:

There is no question but that there have been interactions between the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda operatives. They have occurred over a span of some 8 or 10 years to our knowledge. There are currently Al Qaeda in Iraq,'' - Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Infinity CBS Radio, Nov. 14, 2002.

"What I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network," former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, United Nations Testimony, February 5, 2003.

"We know he's out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization," - Vice President Dick Cheney, NBC Meet The Press, March 16, 2003.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," - President George W. Bush, Washington Post, June 18, 2004.

The lies have not stopped either. As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie Al Qaeda to the ongoing violence in Iraq. "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims," he said.

Last Summer also saw Dick Cheney doing the rounds in high schools, giving speeches in which he repeated the claim of a Saddam-Al Qaeda link.

Although the new report is the first "official" admission of neocon war lies, there have been many previous accounts that corroborate the deception.

As reported by the NY Times, "The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the United Nations Security Council to track Al Qaeda told reporters that his team had found no evidence linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein" [6/27/03].

According to national security officials, "In the 14 weeks since the fall of Baghdad, coalition forces have not brought to light any significant evidence demonstrating the bond between Iraq and Al Qaeda…Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, the two highest-ranking Qaeda operatives in custody, have told investigators that Mr. bin Laden shunned cooperation with Saddam Hussein" [NY Times, 7/20/03]

Even the 9/11 commission report, famed for its numerous omissions, undercuts claims before the war that Hussein had links to Al Qaeda.

Fast forward to April 2007 and a separate Pentagon Report, based on interrogations, dismissed any link between Al Qaeda and Saddam.

It was also revealed last Summer, via Stephen Hayes’s biography on Dick Cheney, that the current Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell appears to side with “those who believe that the administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq for political purposes before the 2003 invasion.”

McConnell decried the “secondary unit” established within the Pentagon to “reinterpret information” prior to the war. An internal Pentagon investigation released in February revealed that former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith utilized the Counter-Terrorism Evaluation Group within the Pentagon to create and promote false links between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Specifically, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz “asked Feith’s analysts to ignore the intelligence community’s belief that the militant Islamist al-Qaeda and Saddam’s secular dictatorship were unlikely allies.” Subsequently, Feith “disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship…to senior decision-makers.”

I should have seen this coming!

Ah......the 2002 NIE said such a link if any was weak. Sort a easy to debunk, eh? Or are you pretending we went to war for that?

A little late if it's all over the blogosphere...I guess they just didn't want to spend
the money to print it...it looks like the economy...including budget may tighten up.

I bet Spitzer ain't publishing his story either.

I didnt pretend anything...Colin Powell used it as the link, Bush-Cheney have tried to link them for years leading up to and after and now use the fear of al Qaeda to justify everything associated with the war on terror. I think you are missing the broader picture here and that is the manipulation of the mainstream media.

Then I'd suggest you ought to read the document then.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB...2-terrorism.pdf
The discussion on any links between Iraq and terrorism is only 42 pages long, you might enjoy it.

So you are trying to deny that there was much ado made about it? Maybe you don't listen to as much right wing media as I do because it has been shoved down everyone's throats ad nauseum...now it's been replaced by the shout outs to the Islamo Fascists.

After the claim of chemical weapons was debunked for the most part, they went right into the Saddam/al Qaeda links.

Why do I even respond to you...I should know by now you will always defend any kind of warmongering.

FYI -- A thread on this topic was started on March 12th...

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...showtopic=88334

I think we may have found some common ground on this issue.

Marine agrees that the link between al Qaeda and Iraq was tenuuous.

He suggests that the

What he refuses to acknowledge it seems is that the Bush Administration executed a deliberate strategy to link Saddam and al Qaeda together --- and Saddam and 9/11 together.

It was a deliberate strategy. And it worked with the American people.

What possible motive could the Administration have for devising such a link.

We need only consult our allies in Great Britain. The Downing Street Memo provides all the answer we need. The Bush Adminsitration was engaged in a deliberate and systematic effort to fix the intellgience around a case for going to war in Iraq to effect regime change under the guise that he represented a threat to the United States via WMD and his links to terrorists including al Qaeda.

Plain and simple for some of us to acknowledge.

As for the report Marine, first on page 2 -- it highlights that there was not an effort to determine any links between al Qaeda and Iraq --- but rather an "aggressive" effort to determine such links. Remember, Bush on 9/11 requested that Richard Clarke provide such links despite Clarke telling the President plainly that such links were non-existent.

Also, the paper is developed in response to requests from "senior" policy staff.

"No conclusive evidence is provided of cooperation on specific terrorist operations"

"The report notes that Iraq has had "sporadic" and "wary" contacts with al Qaeda --- and not contacts that have "developed" over a period of time.

Such contacts were tempered by "mistrust" and "conflicting ideologies".

The report also indicates that a detailee in the Pentagon --- DIA I believe --- independently took it upon herself to so Iraq analysis --- wherein her research was never double checked --- and she on her on sought to challenge the conclusion reached by the CIA that there was little link between the two...

She determined on her own and without a specific charge that the evidence was clear that a link existed between al Qaeda and Iraq...

So it was this DIA analysts independent data-mining which was contrary to the excellent intelligence analysis provided by CIA that became the foundation for the erroneous evidence that was used to provide the links --- I believe Feith was the DOD undersecretary that prepared the separate intelligence report with this bad intel including the alleged and since debunked meeting with Atta --- which the CIA was well aware of --- but that it had dismissed as a low confidence report.

All of this bad intelligence was included in the new

As the effort to "fix" intelligence around a policy outcome continued.

Perhaps after all this Marine can explain to us why the Bush Administration would in engage in a deliberate and systematic effort to link al Qaeda and Iraq and 9/11 if no credible link ever existed?

Marine, did you even read the above report?

False Pretenses

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:

On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "
In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn't requested it.
In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear."
On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.
On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."
On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources." As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government]."
The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.

It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation. For all 935 false statements, including when and where they occurred, go to the search page for this project; the methodology used for this analysis is explained here.

In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.

The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, "independent" validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq.

The "ground truth" of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: "It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual "ground truth" regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who's Who of domestic agencies.

On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials, have publicly — and in some cases vociferously — accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this nation's allies on their way to war.

Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials — Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz — have testified before Congress about Iraq.

Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.

Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

RWS ---

Marine's self esteem seems tied to his necessary belief that the war in Iraq was justified.

It was not.

Iraq for him is another Vietnam for him. I do not believe he is a warmonger. I believe he is a misguided patriot. He believes in his Commander in Chief now as he did in Vietnam. He believes that that Commander in Chief would not lie to his soldiers and send them into an unnecessary war. And he believes that American military might is the surest way to secure American strength and global importance. It is a flawed argument which the Bush Administration has repeatedly shown an incompetence for supporting with its failure after failure.

More and more evidence will come out -- and if Obama is President (since we know that with Hillary's vote in support of the war she may not have the incentive to shine a bright light on the intelligence gathering and manipulation process that took place in the Bush Administration since it would only demonstrate that her vote was wrong on the issue) -- we may obtain information that details the gross misrepresentations that took place here.

It is true, the 2002 NIE said that, just as it said a lot of the evidence the Bush Administration was relying on to make the case for war was just as questionable.

But if that is true, then why did the Bush Administration engage in a deliberate and systematic effort to demonstrate that such a link did indeed exist?

Why?

Because the Bush Administration needed public opinion with them.

Because the Bush Adminsitration was fixing intelligence around a desired policy -- regime change in Iraq.

You are preaching to the choir here, although I am concerned that Hillary or Obama will listen to others and just send in more troops = more deaths rather than just getting the hell out of there...or reinstate the draft which could be the worst possible scenario as far as I am concerned. For some reason the Dems still keep listening to flawed intelligence, some even sitting on related committees.

I do not believe either would send more troops to Iraq.

I believe that both might keep troops there for an extended period of time if that meant that total forces could withdraw sooner.

Which flawed intelligence are you sugegsting they are relying upon?