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Skriven 2005-11-22 21:10:26 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: They lied.
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Report: 9/11-Iraq link refuted days after attack
Magazine says administration refused to give key docs to Senate committee
MSNBC
Updated: 7:09 p.m. ET Nov. 22, 2005

Ten days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush was
advised that U.S. intelligence found no credible connection linking the
attacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein, or evidence suggesting linkage
between Saddam and the al-Qaida terrorist network, according to a published
report.

The report, published Tuesday in The National Journal, cites government
records, as well as present and former officials with knowledge of the
issue. The information in the story, written by National Journal
contributor Murray Waas, points to an abiding administration concern for
secrecy that extended to keeping information from the Senate committee
charged with investigating the matter.

In one of the Journal report's more compelling disclosures, Saddam is said
to have viewed al-Qaida as a threat, rather than a potential ally.

Presidential brief
The president's daily brief, or PDB, for Sept. 21, 2001, was prepared at
the request of President Bush, the Journal reported, who was said to be
eager to determine whether any linkage between the Sept. 11 attacks and the
Iraqi regime existed.

And a considerable amount of the Sept. 21 PDB found its way into a longer,
more detailed Central Intelligence Agency assessment of the likelihood of
an al-Qaida-Iraq connection.

The Journal story reports that that assessment was released to Bush, Vice
President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice,
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and other senior policy-makers in the
Bush administration.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has requested from the White House the
detailed CIA assessment, as well as the Sept. 21 PDB and several other
PDBs, as part of the committee's continuing inquiry into whether the Bush
administration misrepresented intelligence information in the months before
the start of the war with Iraq in March 2003.

The Bush administration has refused to surrender these documents.

“Indeed,ö the Journal story reported, citing congressional sources, “the
existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence
Committee until the summer of 2004.ö

Long-alleged connection
After Sept. 11, the administration insisted that a connection existed
between Iraq and al-Qaida. President Bush, in an October 2002 speech in
Cincinnati, said the United States had “learned that Iraq has trained
al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and gas.ö

And Vice President Cheney, in a September 2003 appearance on NBC's “Meet
the Press,ö alleged there was “a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida
that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s.ö

But the National Journal report said that the few believable reports of
contact between Iraq and al-Qaida “involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to
monitor the terrorist group.ö

Saddam considered al-Qaida “as well as other theocratic radical Islamist
organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime,ö the Journal
reported. “At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating
the ranksö of al-Qaida with Iraqi intelligence operatives as a way to get
more information about how the organization worked, the Journal said.

Journal: Little has changed
The Journal story asserts that little has changed to refute the initial
absence of information linking Saddam and the al-Qaida network.

“In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly
placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to
contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship
existedö between Iraq and al-Qaida, the Journal reported.

Reporter Waas quotes one former administration official, whose assessment
is a problematic contradiction of the administration’s longstanding
assertions:

“What the President was told on September 21 was consistent with everything
he has been told since — that the evidence was just not there.ö
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10164478/

[snip]

They lied, DUH!

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The Republican Party, a criminal enterprise organization.
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