Reports
Wednesday morning that the 9/11 Commission has determined there was no
cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida are completely false - and are
undoubtedly driven by the media's determination to contradict the Bush
administration's claims that such a link exists.
"9/11 Panel Says Iraq
Rebuffed Bin Laden" reads the headline on the Associated Press report
on today's Commission staff statement.
But that's not what the
Commission staff report actually said.
The below passage, for
instance, does more to confirm the Bush administration's claims of an
Iraq-al Qaida link than it does to contradict them.
"The Sudanese, to protect
their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin* to cease
[support for anti-Saddam Islamists in Northern Iraq] and arranged for
contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda*.
"A senior Iraqi
intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally
meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to
establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but
Iraq apparently never responded." [Staff Statement No. 15, Page 5]
Apparently never responded?
How, pray tell, does the AP derive from those words the conclusive claim
that Iraq "rebuffed" bin Laden?
The Commission statement
continues:
"There have been reports
that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had
returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a
collaborative relationship."
What's the evidence for this
less-than-conclusive surmise?
"Two senior Bin Ladin
associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda
and Iraq," says the Commission.
Such a statement begs the
question: Why does the Commission, let alone the press, take the word of
two senior bin Laden associates over, say, Iraq's new prime minister, Iyad
Allawi.
Last December he told the
London Telegraph, "We are uncovering evidence all the time of
Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda."
Reacting to the discovery of an
Iraqi intelligence document placing 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Baghdad
two months before the attacks, he continued:
"This is the most
compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not
only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those
responsible for the September 11 attacks."
In fact, nowhere does the
Commission make the claim that Iraq and al-Qaida never cooperated. What it
does say is "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda
cooperated on attacks against the United States." [NewsMax
italics]
Apparently Dr. Allawi's
asssement counts for nothing.
Even so, it's worth noting that
elsewhere in today's staff statement, the 9/11 Commission asserts:
"With al Qaeda at its
foundation, Bin Ladin sought to build a broader Islamic Army that included
terrorist groups from Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Oman, Tunisia,
Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea. Not all
[terrorist] groups from these states agreed to join, but at least one from
each did." [Staff Statement No. 15, Page 3]
In other words, at least one
terror group from Iraq did form an alliance with bin Laden.
Another problem: If the press
is going to take today's staff statement as gospel, certain long-held
media assumptions will need to be drastically revised, such as the widely
accepted notion that al-Qaida was involved in the first World Trade Center
bombing.
Not true, says the Commission.
"Whether Bin Ladin and his
organization had roles in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center ...
remains a matter of substantial uncertainty," the staff statement
says, before insisting, "We have no conclusive evidence" of a
bin Laden link. [Staff Statement No. 15, Page 6]
The same goes for
"Operation Bojinka," the 1995 plot to hijack 12 airliners
hatched by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that experts say was
the blueprint for the 9/11 attacks.
"[Mohammed] was not,
however, an al Qaeda member at the time of the Manilla [Bojinka]
plot," Commission staffers say, even though they acknowledge that he
went on to mastermind the 9/11 attacks.
The press is furiously spinning
the 9/11 Commission staff statement in a bid to discredit the Bush
administration. Americans should go to the Sept. 11 Commission Web site
and read the conclusions for themselves: http://www.9-11commission.gov/
* Commission spellings