| 1. Secretary Powell misrepresented the alleged terrorist training camp in northern Iraq.
Secretary Powell claimed and presented a photograph showing that a "terrorist poison and explosives factory" is located in Khurmal, a Kurdish village near the Iranian border. Local Kurdish officials allied with the United States told the New York Times that no such camp exists at that location. 1 A senior official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which receives financial assistance from the United States, said he had no information about the compound. A local administrator for the group that controls Khurmal said Powell’s claim was "not true."
A few days after Powell’s presentation, local Kurdish officials brought British journalists to the alleged site in the hamlet of Saryatt. The journalists reported no evidence of a chemical weapons or explosives camp. Said the London Observer: "the terrorist factory was nothing of the kind—more a dilapidated collection of concrete buildings. . . . There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere." 2
The BBC reported seeing no obvious evidence of chemical weapons production. The site was "crawling with . . . gunmen but nothing more sinister than small arms was on display." 3
2. Secretary Powell misidentified the group that controls Khurmal.
Powell claimed that the extremist Islamic group Ansar al-Islam "controls this corner of Iraq." Khurmal is actually controlled by a different Islamic group, a less extremist organization known as Komal Islami Kurdistan. The Komal group is financed by the PUK as an alternative to Ansar. 4 U.S. and UK intelligence officers visited this region in spring 2002. 5 The PUK has been hosting a U.S. intelligence team for several months. Detailed information about the location of facilities and the political alignment of groups in the area should be available to U.S. officials.
3. Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi is not an Al Qaeda kingpin.
If Zarqawi is a collaborator of bin Laden, created a terror training camp in Iraq, and runs a terrorist cell in Baghdad, as claimed by Secretary Powell, presumably he would be identified by U.S. law enforcement officials as a prime terrorist suspect. In the FBI’s current roster of "most wanted terrorists," Zarqawi is not listed. The most wanted list identifies twenty-two international terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden, but not Zarqawi.
Newsweek magazine reported on 3 February that neither the CIA nor British MI 6 put much stock in Zarqawi’s alleged Iraqi visits, stressing that such reports are "unconfirmed."
The Wall Street Journal reported on 7 February that German investigators found no evidence that Zarqawi worked with Baghdad. Counter-terrorism experts conducted an 18-month investigation and compiled hundreds of pages of information on Zarqawi and his organization, Al Tawhid. According to Minister of Interior Otto Schily, they found no evidence that Zarqawi operated in areas of Iraq controlled by Baghdad. German security officers rounded up a dozen members of Al Tawhid last year. Its members acknowledged that Zarqawi was their leader, but said their focus was the Palestinian cause. Members of the cell said that Iraq never figured in the picture, and that Zarqawi was not a core operative of al-Qaeda.
The New York Times reported on 10 February that German officials investigating Zarqawi were surprised by Powell’s assertion of a Baghdad connection. "We have been investigating Mr. Zarqawi for some time," said a senior German intelligence official. . . . "as of yet we have seen no indication of a direct link between Zarqawi and Baghdad."
Powell displayed a diagram linking Zarqawi to two Islamic militants previously arrested in Paris. French intelligence sources said that their interrogations of the suspects did not establish a link between the two men and al-Zarqawi. "Al-Zarqawi’s name never once appeared in our different investigations," the sources reported.
4. Ansar al-Islam is not linked to the government of Iraq.
Human Rights Watch, which recently sent an investigative team to the region controlled by Ansar, said it was "not aware of any convincing evidence supporting" the contention of a connection between the Baghdad government and Ansar. 10 In its recent report on Iraqi Kurdistan, the International Crisis Group disclosed that U.S.-allied officials in the region have disputed a Baghdad-Ansar connection. "PUK officials, who stand most to gain from an Ansar-Baghdad collusion that might trigger U.S. intervention on the PUK’s behalf, have stated that there is no evidence of such a link. Barham Salih [prime minister of the regional PUK government] . . . has said so repeatedly, emphasizing that the Iraqi Arabs fighting with Jund/Ansar are quite clearly anti-regime."
Mullah Krekar, the founder and head of Ansar, declared in 2001 that the objective of the Islamist movement in Kurdistan is "to bring down the Iraqi regime and replace it with an Islamic regime." 12 Krekar told the BBC on 31 January that "I never had links with Saddam Hussein’s family, with Saddam Hussein’s government, Saddam Hussein’s party, not in the past, not now, not in the future."
5. Secretary Powell failed to mention that Iran has supported Ansar.
While indications of Iraqi support for Ansar are weak, there is ample evidence of considerable Iranian backing for the group. Said the ICG report, "the only thing that is indisputable is that the group could not survive without the support of powerful factions in neighboring Iran, its sole lifeline to the outside world." 14 Human Rights Watch concluded that the group’s location on the Iranian border and "credible reports" of its members transiting through Iran "suggests these fighters have received at least limited support from some Iranian sources." 15 According to the ICG report, Ansar has received weapons and munitions from Iran, and Iranian officers have conducted artillery spotting on Ansar’s behalf.
6. The United States relied on forced testimony and torture to obtain evidence.
Much of the information in Secretary Powell’s presentation came from detainees. The interrogation of suspects was conducted under what the New York Times described as "unspecified circumstances of psychological pressure." 17
The Washington Post reported on 26 December that Al Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan have been subjected to "stress and duress" methods of interrogation. The use of such methods violates the 1949 Geneva Convention and is a war crime. A Human Rights Watch letter to the Bush administration seeking assurances against the use of such methods has not been answered.
Claims about Ansar’s links to Al Qaeda and the Baghdad government came from captured Ansar fighters. According to the ICG, "Their statements should be received with a good deal of skepticism since they were made in custody and in the presence of PUK guards. . . . No independent sources have ever been presented to corroborate the link between Ansar and al-Qaeda."
7. Secretary Powell’s claims about an Al-Qaeda/Baghdad connection contradict statements by U.S. and UK intelligence officials.
A U.S. intelligence analyst recently interviewed by the Washington Post said that "Zarqawi is outside bin Laden’s circle" and not under Al Qaeda control. Senior U.S. officials said that the Iraqi government does not control or sponsor Zarqawi’s network. U.S. officials and law enforcement sources in London said that the Zarqawi connection "is still being investigated."
Anthony Cordesman, former director of intelligence assessment in the U.S. Department of Defense, recently told Australian Broadcasting that there is "a really serious problem in intelligence. It’s virtually impossible to prove these kinds of conspiracies. . . . It is going to require a great deal more debate and reporting than simply accepting the U.S. statements without further review."
An American intelligence source told reporters for the London Telegraph that "the intelligence is practically non-existent. . . . It is impossible to support the bald conclusions being made by the White House and the Pentagon given the poor quantity and quality of the intelligence available."
A British Ministry of Defense intelligence report written in January 2003 and recently leaked to the BBC concluded: "While there have been contacts between Al-Qaida and the [Baghdad] regime in the past, it is assessed that any fledgling relationship foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideology."
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw conceded during questioning in parliament on 5 February that he had seen no intelligence that Saddam Hussein is harboring Al Qaeda operatives.
The London Observer noted on 9 February that "For months British intelligence officers—like their counterparts in the U.S.—have been insisting that there is no hard evidence of a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, while at every turn their political masters have been insisting the opposite."
Intelligence sources told the BBC on 5 February that there is growing disquiet at the way in which the work of the intelligence community is being politicized to make the case for war in Iraq.
Former CIA Director Robert Gates, a supporter of military action in Iraq, recently acknowledged to New Yorker writer Jeffrey Goldberg that the evidence linking Saddam and Al Qaeda "is not irrefutable." | |
