Saddam, documents indicate no Iraq-Qaeda cooperation

Post-9/11 Era Forum

Saddam, documents indicate no Iraq-Qaeda cooperation

Fri Apr 6, 3:44 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Interrogations of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and documents seized after the 2003 US-led invasion confirmed that his regime had not been cooperating with Al-Qaeda, the Washington Post reported on its website Friday.

The report contradicted a strong argument for the invasion made by the administration of President George W. Bush that Baghdad had a working relationship with Al-Qaeda, the Afghanistan-based group led by Osama bin Laden blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The Post reported that a newly released declassified Department of Defense report said information obtained after the fall of Saddam confirmed the prewar position of the US Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon intelligence that the Iraqi government had had no substantial contacts with Al-Qaeda.

This position was shored up by interrogations of Saddam and other top officials captured by the US-led coalition forces in Iraq, said report, obtained by the Post.

The report noted that the office of then-undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith, one of the foremost advocates for invading Iraq after the 2001 attacks, had ignored the CIA's position and characterized the Al-Qaeda-Iraq relationship as "mature" and "symbiotic" in a September 2002 briefing to the chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Feith briefing alleged that the two cooperated in 10 areas, including training, financing and logistics.

But the new report, the Post says, said the US intelligence community had concluded at the time that there were "no conclusive signs" of links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and that "direct cooperation ... has not been established" between the two.

Prior to the war there was little public dispute inside the United States over the Bush administration's linking Iraq and bin Laden's group.

But since the invasion, a number of intelligence officials have alleged that the White House and its backers ignored their intelligence and "cherry picked" information that supported their campaign to persuade Americans of the need to go to war.

In a radio interview Wednesday Cheney insisted on a prewar link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, saying that the group was working in Iraq "before we even arrived on the scene."

"As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq," Cheney told conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

--------

-HECK!

Question for any die-hard Bushites: How did the US president manage to choose a war with just about the only country in the Middle East were Al Qaeda or radical militant Islamic groups weren't based in any great numbers?

Please send answers on a post card to the White-house. The guy needs all the help he can get.

Good question and another good question is why was Iraq the only country in the Middle East that didn't have al Qaeda in great numbers? Or did it???

Oh and all cities in the US have bad guys except Miami. Miami doesn't have any bad guys. I was there I know.

It's almost as stupid as saying Iraq was the only country in the ME that didn't have al Qaeda isn't it?

We know that at least one al Qaeda leader I forget his name, went to Iraq for medical treatment. And we know that there was al Qaeda training camps. Wait they were secret training camps so they really didn't exist. I guess like Area 51, you know that doesn't exist either.

Working Relationship? no, were they there? yes. Did Saddam know what they were doing? probably not. But he allowed them to train there.

Interrogations of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and documents seized after the 2003 US-led invasion confirmed that his regime had not been cooperating with Al-Qaeda, the Washington Post reported on its website Friday.

I think the word you missed is CONFIRMED. And you probably passed over the phrase CHERRY PICKED too, as in:

But since the invasion, a number of intelligence officials have alleged that the White House and its backers ignored their intelligence and "cherry picked" information that supported their campaign to persuade Americans of the need to go to war.