9/11 Commission rules out Saddam/al-Qaida link
US president George Bush’s much-questioned justification for the Iraq war suffered another major setback when an independent commission dismissed claims of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
The findings of the commission, investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks, comes on top of the Bush administration’s failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Both ideas had been central ingredients of Bush’s rationale for invading.
The latest findings, less than five months before the US presidential election, raised fresh questions about Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and gave Democrats an opportunity to exploit an issue that already had become a political liability for the White House.
“The administration misled America and the administration reached too far,” Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said.
“They did not tell the truth to Americans about what was happening or their intentions.”
At times, the administration has seemed to suggest that Saddam was involved in the September 11 attacks against America.
Democrats have accused the White House - particularly Vice President Dick Cheney – of trying to create that impression even though the administration has acknowledged there is no evidence to support the idea.
More than two-thirds of Americans expressed a belief last year that Iraq was behind the attacks, and Cheney said at the time: “It’s not surprising people make that connection.”
Bush worked to fuel the connection, talking about the September 11 terrorists and Saddam in the same breath.
“Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans – this time armed by Saddam,” Bush said in his State of the Union message last year, before the war.
“It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.”
As recently as Monday, Cheney said Saddam “had long-established ties with al-Qaida” and Bush defended his vice president’s assertion.
But yesterday the commission bluntly contradicted the White House. It said there was no evidence Iraq and al-Qaida had a collaborative relationship.
In fact, the commission said Iraq had ignored bin Laden’s request to establish training camps in Iraq and for help in obtaining weapons.
Last year, Cheney referred to what he called a credible, but unconfirmed intelligence report that Mohamed Atta, leader of the September 11 hijackers, had met at least once in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attacks.
But the commission said that meeting never happened.
US secretary of state Colin Powell, asked about the commission report, told the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television network: “I think we have said, and it is clear, that there is a connection, and we have seen these connections between al-Qaida and the regime of Saddam Hussein and we stick with that. We have not said it was related to 9/11.”
The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep Jane Harman, said US intelligence had never supported the notion of an operational pre-war relationship between Saddam and al-Qaida.
“Unfortunately, Iraq is now flypaper,” she said. “It has become the central training ground for terrorists and terrorism. This was not a problem before the war but it is now due to poor post-war planning.”
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