Backtracking on al-Qaeda ties: Colin Powell's admission that the Bush administration had no "concrete evidence" of an Iraq-al-Qaeda terrorist connection is a full reversal of his earlier statement to the UN.

We know that Iraq and al Queda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.

President Bush, address in

Cincinnati, Ohio, October 7, 2002

There is not--you know. I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, responding to a question on ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq in a press conference, January 8, 2004 president Bush made dramatic headlines in Cincinnati before the Iraq war with his claim that there were clear links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, allegations reiterated by other administration officials over the following year. Bush's Cincinnati speech set the tone for the war propaganda effort, where Bush Administration officials terrified Americans with the specter of al-Qaeda operatives launching more attacks on Americans--this time armed with weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. But the administration possessed no hard evidence that an Iraq al-Qaeda terrorist connection existed.

Colin Powell's recent admission that the Bush administration had no "concrete evidence" tying Saddam Hussein's regime to al-Qaeda was a full reversal of his statement to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003. In that speech, Powell stated: "Iraq officials deny accusations of ties with al Qaeda. These denials are simply not credible."

Intelligence Assessments

The truth is that the president's own intelligence agencies were telling the administration all along there were no significant ties between the socialist despot Saddam Hussein and the religious fanatics of al Qaeda.

Former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann told the July 12. 2003 Boston Globe that the Bush administration's assertion was just plain false. "There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation," Thielmann concluded.

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the consensus estimate of major U.S. intelligence agencies such as the military, CIA, NSA and State Department, also denied any tangible evidence of links. The June 22, 2003 Washington Post summarized the classified NIE study by saying: "While Bush also spoke of Iraq and al Qaeda having had 'high-level contacts that go back a decade," the president did not say--as the classified intelligence report asserted--that the contacts occurred in the early 1990s, when Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, was living in Sudan and his organization was in its infancy." The NIE concluded that there was no hard evidence linking the Hussein regime with al-Qaeda.

More importantly, the specifics cited by Bush and Powell were--at best--deceptive. For example, when Mr. Bush stated in his February 8, 2003 radio address that a "terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner ... runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq," he failed to mention that the area in question was in Kurdish-held territory, outside Saddam Hussein's control. Also, the administration repeatedly juxtaposed references to 9-11 with references to Saddam Hussein, creating the impression that Saddam was involved in the 9-11 terrorist attacks without actually saying it. As Mr. Bush himself finally acknowledged on September 17, 2003: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th [attacks]."

The Post article quoted above noted that the president's past remarks on Hussein-al-Qaeda connections flatly contradicted the assessment of his own intelligence agencies: "The president said some al Qaeda leaders had fled Afghanistan to Iraq and referred to one 'very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year.' It was a reference to Abu Mussab Zarqawi, a Jordanian. U.S. intelligence already had concluded that Zarqawi was not an al Qaeda member."

The consensus conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that there was no reason to believe there were ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq has been echoed by friendly foreign intelligence agencies. "His [bin Laden's] aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq," proclaimed a British Intelligence dossier on the topic, as cited by the BBC on February 5, 2003. Even the United Nations, admittedly a dubious source, came to the same conclusion. "We have never had information presented to us--even though we've asked questions--which would indicate that there is a direct link [between al-Qaeda and Iraq]," Michael Chandler, chief UN investigator of al-Qaeda, told the New York Times for June 27, 2003.

Until very recently, the Bush Administration was undaunted by the consistency of the findings of U.S. and other intelligence agencies worldwide. Administration spokesmen continued to echo the line, as Vice President Dick Cheney did in remarks on the September 14, 2003 Meet the Press program: "We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the 90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW [biological weapons] and CW [chemical weapons], that al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing [as stated] bomb-making expertise and advice to the al Qaeda organization."

Powell's recent reversal came less than a month after George W. Bush's surprising statements to Diane Sawyer on ABC News' December 16 Primetime program, wherein the president tried to evade Sawyer's repeated questions about administration claims that Saddam possessed actual weapons of mass destruction. But Mr. Bush tried to answer the question by referring to WMD programs. When Diane Sawyer pointed out that the administration had stated, "as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that [Saddam] could move to acquire those weapons," Bush responded, "So what's the difference?" And he added: "The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That's what I'm trying to explain to you."

Of course, when the administration presented the American people with its case for going to war against Iraq, it did not merely say that Saddam had WMDs. It argued that the Iraqi WMD threat was both immense and imminent. Now, according to the president, it makes no difference if Saddam actually possessed WMDs or had programs to develop WMDs. In fact, Bush's flippant "So what's the difference?" remark is actually an acknowledgement that, so far as the administration could tell, Saddam did not have any WMDs.

Mr. Bush even insisted to Diane Sawyer that "Saddam Hussein was a threat and the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country." How so? American servicemen were not coming home in body bags at a rate of one or two per day prior to the war. And U.S. interventionist foreign policy continues to polarize and enrage the Islamic world, making it easier for our nation's enemies to garner support for their supposed Jihad against the West.

Public Misled

Colin Powell's recent admission that he has not seen any "concrete evidence" connecting al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, together with George W. Bush's admission that Saddam may not have had WMDs, have undermined the administration's major arguments for the war. And those admissions have also further tarnished the credibility of the Bush administration--as well they should.

Americans should never forget the many misleading and unsubstantiated statements the Bush administration made a year ago to justify going to war. They should recall, for example, that Mr. Bush claimed in his October 2002 Cincinnati speech that "Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas"---and that "Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States." And Americans should also recall that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, in September 2002, that "no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq."

Mr. Bush would love to point to the discovery of any WMD--no matter how inconsequential compared to the threat he and his administration portrayed--to argue that he was right. But based on the administration's own incredible admissions, it is now clear that the administration purposely misled the American public, claiming things for which it did not have the evidence.

EXTRA COPIES AVAILABLE

Additional copies of this issue of THE NEW AMERICAN are available at quantity-discount prices. To order, visit www.thenewamerica.com/marketplace/ or see the card between pages 38-39.