aria
Former Moderator
- Joined
- Dec 4, 1977
- Posts
- 39,546
WMD? Nope.
Al Qaeda? Nope.
Told-you-so? Yup.
Some facts:
- Banned biological and chemical weapons: none yet found.
- Percentage of Iraqis who view American-led forces as liberators: 2, according to a poll commissioned last month by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
- Number of possible Al Qaeda associates known to have been in Iraq in recent years: one, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose links to the terrorist group and Mr. Hussein's government remain sketchy.
Article, from the NY Times frontpage today (a lengthy description of what the Panel believes happened is posted HERE):
June 17, 2004
THE OVERVIEW
Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes a Wider Plot for 9/11
By PHILIP SHENON and CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
WASHINGTON, June 16 - The staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks sharply contradicted one of President Bush's central justifications for the Iraq war, reporting on Wednesday that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The assertion came in staff reports that offer a chilling, richly detailed chronology of the Sept. 11 plot and rewrite much of the history of the attacks.
The chronology, based on the panel's review of highly classified accounts of interrogations of captured Qaeda leaders, shows that Osama bin Laden was far more intimately involved in the planning of the attacks than previously known and approved the selection of each of the 19 hijackers. It also shows that the original plot called for attacks that would have been even larger and more deadly.
The commission's investigators said in a pair of reports released at a public hearing that Mr. bin Laden and his deputies discussed target lists as early as 1999 that would have included the White House, the Capitol, C.I.A. and F.B.I. headquarters, nuclear power plants and skyscrapers in California and Washington State. The plot involved hijacking 10 jets instead of 4 and, the commission's staff said, originally included a plan for simultaneous hijackings of American passenger planes in Southeast Asia.
The reports say that Mr. bin Laden, who has been depicted in the past as being far less involved in the logistics of the operation, ordered the Sept. 11 attacks over the opposition of many of his advisers and of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader in Afghanistan.
"Bin Laden effectively overruled their objections, and the attacks went forward," one report said, adding that Mr. bin Laden "thought that an attack against the United States would reap Al Qaeda a recruiting and fund-raising bonanza."
The commission's investigators said information found in a captured Qaeda computer showed that Mohamed Atta, a ringleader of the plot and the pilot of one of the hijacked planes, selected the date for the attacks, choosing a day after the first week of September, when he knew that Congress would be in session after a summer recess. The report said information suggested that the Capitol was the target of the hijacked United Airlines plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11.
As for Iraq, the commission's staff said its investigation showed that the government of Mr. Hussein had rebuffed or ignored requests from Qaeda leaders for help in the 1990's, a conclusion that directly contradicts a series of public statements President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made before and after last year's invasion of Iraq in justifying the war.
"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States," one of the staff reports released on Wednesday said. "Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The report said that despite evidence of repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda in the 90's, "they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
The White House said on Wednesday that it did not see the commission's staff reports as a contradiction of past statements by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and that the administration had always been careful not to suggest that it had proof of a tie between Mr. Hussein and Sept. 11.
"It is not inconsistent for Iraq to have ties with Al Qaeda and not to have been involved in 9/11 or other potential plots against America," Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent in the November election, said that the reports by the Sept. 11 commission were evidence that the "administration misled America, the administration reached too far." In an interview with the Detroit radio station WDET, Mr. Kerry said that "they did not tell the truth to Americans about what was happening or their own intentions."
While Republican members of the bipartisan commission suggested in the past that their investigation might support the White House by uncovering broad links between Mr. Hussein and the terrorist network, the full panel appeared to embrace the staff reports, suggesting that they would be used as the framework for chapters in the commission's final report next month.
"There were systematic efforts by Al Qaeda to connect with Iraq - many of them failed," Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey, said in an interview.
John F. Lehman, another Republican on the panel and Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, has often raised the issue of possible Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda. But he offered no criticism of the staff reports after their release. "I think we presented to the American people for the first time an understanding of where Al Qaeda came from," Mr. Lehman said.
The staff said it had investigated one of the lingering mysteries resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks: whether there was truth to a widely circulated report from Czech intelligence officials that Mr. Atta had met in Prague in April 2001 with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, suggesting an Iraqi connection to the plot.
"We do not believe that such a meeting occurred," the staff report said, citing phone records and other evidence that Mr. Atta was in Florida at the time.
Mr. Cheney has relied on reports of the Prague meeting in arguing that Mr. Hussein had worked closely with Al Qaeda. The vice president as recently as Monday said in a speech that he believed that the former Iraqi president was a "patron of terrorism'' and "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda."
Mr. Bush said in September of last year that "there's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties." Richard A. Clarke, Mr. Bush's former counterterrorism director in the White House, testified to the commission in March that Mr. Bush had pressed him right after the attacks to search for a link to Mr. Hussein. In last year's State of the Union address, Mr. Bush said that "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda."
The contradictions between the staff reports' findings and past White House statements on Iraq were all the more striking given that the commission's staff director, and the final editor of the reports, is Philip D. Zelikow, a University of Virginia historian who was a member of Mr. Bush's White House transition team and who served on his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until last year.
The commission's public hearings this week are the last that the 10-member panel has scheduled before issuing a final report at the end of next month, its Congressionally mandated deadline. The final report is expected to document huge law enforcement and intelligence failures before Sept. 11 and recommend an overhaul of counterterrorism agencies, including the C.I.A. and F.B.I.
The staff reports of Wednesday were described by Mr. Kean as an effort to "close the circle" on the investigation and offered what is easily the most complete and compelling government account of the attacks and the years of detailed planning by Al Qaeda that preceded them.
These are among the staff reports' other conclusions, based on intelligence reports from interrogated Qaeda leaders and other evidence:
Terrorist training camps run by Al Qaeda were "apparently quite good" and "the camps created a climate in which trainees and other personnel were free to think creatively about ways to commit mass murder."
While there is no credible evidence of collaboration between Mr. bin Laden's network and Iraq, there is extensive evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and the fundamentalist Islamic leaders of Iran, including possible collaboration in the 1996 bombing of an apartment building in Saudi Arabia in which 19 Americans were killed.
The Sept. 11 plot cost "somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute," with much of the money spent in the United States on flight training, living expenses and travel, including tickets for the planes.
Mark Glassman contributed reporting for this article.
Al Qaeda? Nope.
Told-you-so? Yup.
Some facts:
- Banned biological and chemical weapons: none yet found.
- Percentage of Iraqis who view American-led forces as liberators: 2, according to a poll commissioned last month by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
- Number of possible Al Qaeda associates known to have been in Iraq in recent years: one, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose links to the terrorist group and Mr. Hussein's government remain sketchy.
Article, from the NY Times frontpage today (a lengthy description of what the Panel believes happened is posted HERE):
June 17, 2004
THE OVERVIEW
Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes a Wider Plot for 9/11
By PHILIP SHENON and CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
WASHINGTON, June 16 - The staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks sharply contradicted one of President Bush's central justifications for the Iraq war, reporting on Wednesday that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The assertion came in staff reports that offer a chilling, richly detailed chronology of the Sept. 11 plot and rewrite much of the history of the attacks.
The chronology, based on the panel's review of highly classified accounts of interrogations of captured Qaeda leaders, shows that Osama bin Laden was far more intimately involved in the planning of the attacks than previously known and approved the selection of each of the 19 hijackers. It also shows that the original plot called for attacks that would have been even larger and more deadly.
The commission's investigators said in a pair of reports released at a public hearing that Mr. bin Laden and his deputies discussed target lists as early as 1999 that would have included the White House, the Capitol, C.I.A. and F.B.I. headquarters, nuclear power plants and skyscrapers in California and Washington State. The plot involved hijacking 10 jets instead of 4 and, the commission's staff said, originally included a plan for simultaneous hijackings of American passenger planes in Southeast Asia.
The reports say that Mr. bin Laden, who has been depicted in the past as being far less involved in the logistics of the operation, ordered the Sept. 11 attacks over the opposition of many of his advisers and of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader in Afghanistan.
"Bin Laden effectively overruled their objections, and the attacks went forward," one report said, adding that Mr. bin Laden "thought that an attack against the United States would reap Al Qaeda a recruiting and fund-raising bonanza."
The commission's investigators said information found in a captured Qaeda computer showed that Mohamed Atta, a ringleader of the plot and the pilot of one of the hijacked planes, selected the date for the attacks, choosing a day after the first week of September, when he knew that Congress would be in session after a summer recess. The report said information suggested that the Capitol was the target of the hijacked United Airlines plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11.
As for Iraq, the commission's staff said its investigation showed that the government of Mr. Hussein had rebuffed or ignored requests from Qaeda leaders for help in the 1990's, a conclusion that directly contradicts a series of public statements President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made before and after last year's invasion of Iraq in justifying the war.
"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States," one of the staff reports released on Wednesday said. "Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The report said that despite evidence of repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda in the 90's, "they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
The White House said on Wednesday that it did not see the commission's staff reports as a contradiction of past statements by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and that the administration had always been careful not to suggest that it had proof of a tie between Mr. Hussein and Sept. 11.
"It is not inconsistent for Iraq to have ties with Al Qaeda and not to have been involved in 9/11 or other potential plots against America," Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent in the November election, said that the reports by the Sept. 11 commission were evidence that the "administration misled America, the administration reached too far." In an interview with the Detroit radio station WDET, Mr. Kerry said that "they did not tell the truth to Americans about what was happening or their own intentions."
While Republican members of the bipartisan commission suggested in the past that their investigation might support the White House by uncovering broad links between Mr. Hussein and the terrorist network, the full panel appeared to embrace the staff reports, suggesting that they would be used as the framework for chapters in the commission's final report next month.
"There were systematic efforts by Al Qaeda to connect with Iraq - many of them failed," Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey, said in an interview.
John F. Lehman, another Republican on the panel and Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, has often raised the issue of possible Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda. But he offered no criticism of the staff reports after their release. "I think we presented to the American people for the first time an understanding of where Al Qaeda came from," Mr. Lehman said.
The staff said it had investigated one of the lingering mysteries resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks: whether there was truth to a widely circulated report from Czech intelligence officials that Mr. Atta had met in Prague in April 2001 with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, suggesting an Iraqi connection to the plot.
"We do not believe that such a meeting occurred," the staff report said, citing phone records and other evidence that Mr. Atta was in Florida at the time.
Mr. Cheney has relied on reports of the Prague meeting in arguing that Mr. Hussein had worked closely with Al Qaeda. The vice president as recently as Monday said in a speech that he believed that the former Iraqi president was a "patron of terrorism'' and "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda."
Mr. Bush said in September of last year that "there's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties." Richard A. Clarke, Mr. Bush's former counterterrorism director in the White House, testified to the commission in March that Mr. Bush had pressed him right after the attacks to search for a link to Mr. Hussein. In last year's State of the Union address, Mr. Bush said that "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda."
The contradictions between the staff reports' findings and past White House statements on Iraq were all the more striking given that the commission's staff director, and the final editor of the reports, is Philip D. Zelikow, a University of Virginia historian who was a member of Mr. Bush's White House transition team and who served on his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until last year.
The commission's public hearings this week are the last that the 10-member panel has scheduled before issuing a final report at the end of next month, its Congressionally mandated deadline. The final report is expected to document huge law enforcement and intelligence failures before Sept. 11 and recommend an overhaul of counterterrorism agencies, including the C.I.A. and F.B.I.
The staff reports of Wednesday were described by Mr. Kean as an effort to "close the circle" on the investigation and offered what is easily the most complete and compelling government account of the attacks and the years of detailed planning by Al Qaeda that preceded them.
These are among the staff reports' other conclusions, based on intelligence reports from interrogated Qaeda leaders and other evidence:
Terrorist training camps run by Al Qaeda were "apparently quite good" and "the camps created a climate in which trainees and other personnel were free to think creatively about ways to commit mass murder."
While there is no credible evidence of collaboration between Mr. bin Laden's network and Iraq, there is extensive evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and the fundamentalist Islamic leaders of Iran, including possible collaboration in the 1996 bombing of an apartment building in Saudi Arabia in which 19 Americans were killed.
The Sept. 11 plot cost "somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute," with much of the money spent in the United States on flight training, living expenses and travel, including tickets for the planes.
Mark Glassman contributed reporting for this article.
