Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- "When [the truth emerges], this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall"
--Sen. Robert Byrd (D), on Bush's deceptions and manipulations
CIA had doubts on Iraq link to al-Qaida
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Tuesday June 10, 2003
The Guardian (UK)
The debunking of the Bush administration's pre-war certainties on Iraq gathered pace yesterday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida was highly unlikely.
As President George Bush was forced for the second time in days to defend the decision to go to war, a new set of leaks from CIA officials suggested a tendency in the White House to suppress or ignore intelligence findings which did not shore up the case for war.
The interrogation reports of two senior al-Qaida members, both in US custody, showed that the CIA had reason to doubt the allegations of a connection between Saddam's regime and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
Such assertions, promoted vigorously by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, were used as an additional justification for war, after the central argument that Iraq's arsenal of banned weapons posed an imminent danger.
The charge of a link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam was contentious even at the time, and yesterday's report in the New York Times that the two al-Qaida members, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, dismissed the idea deepened the impression that Americans had been deliberately misled to support the decision for war.
In recent days that impression has become sufficiently widespread to put officials on the defensive. Yesterday Mr Bush predicted that US inspectors scouring Iraq would soon find evidence of a programme of weapons of mass destruction. He also reaffirmed that al-Qaida maintained a network in Baghdad.
"Intelligence throughout the decade shows they had a weapons programme," Mr Bush said. "I am absolutely convinced that with time, we'll find out they did have a weapons programme."
That assertion stops well short of Mr Bush's statement during a visit to Poland on May 31 that US troops had already found weapons of mass destruction: two trailers the US said at the time had been used as mobile biological labs.
With the White House fighting for its credibility, the New York Times reported that the two al-Qaida lieutenants had dismissed the notion of cooperation between Saddam and Bin Laden. Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March last year, told his CIA interrogators that Bin Laden had considered and then rejected the idea of working with Saddam because he did not want to be in the Iraqi leader's debt. His information was supported on the eve of war after Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan on March 1. Mohammed, who had been al-Qaida's chief of operations, told the CIA the group did not work with Saddam.
While the CIA shared its interrogation record of Zubaydah with other intelligence agencies, it did not release its conclusions to the public. That omission could prove extremely damaging to the administration because it suggests that officials ignored intelligence that did not fit with their plans for Iraq.
"This gets to the serious question of to what extent did they try to align the facts with the conclusions that they wanted," an intelligence official told the New York Times. "Things pointing in one direction were given a lot of weight, and other things were discounted."
_______________________
Powell: Mobile labs were for WMD
May 22, 2003
Powell says labs show that Saddam's Iraq was in "material breach" of U.N. Resolution 1441.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Intelligence analysts have determined that two suspected mobile biological weapons laboratories found in Iraq were "certainly designed and constructed for that purpose," says U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"The intelligence community has really looked hard at these vans, and we can find no other purpose for them," Powell told reporters in Washington.
But Powell said that the labs had been cleaned to the point that "you can't find actual germs on them."
"We don't know whether they have been used for that purpose or not, but they were certainly designed and constructed for that purpose," Powell said. "We have taken our time on this one because we wanted to make sure we got it right. And the intelligence community, I think, is convinced now that that's the purpose they served."
In February, Powell told the United Nations Security Council that U.S. intelligence officials had learned from an Iraqi defector that President Saddam Hussein's regime was using mobile labs to develop weapons of mass destruction. The administration used the account to bolster its argument that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and was in violation of long-standing U.N. resolutions.
Wednesday, Powell said, "I think we knew what we were saying when we went to the U.N. on the fifth of February, and I was pleased to be the one to present the case. But this certainly is a good example of the kinds of activities that that regime was involved in for so many years." He said the labs show that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in "material breach" of U.N. Resolution 1441. "They stayed in material breach. They did not do anything to fix the situation; and, therefore, they suffered the serious consequences that followed."
Across town, on the Senate floor, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, blasted the administration for its talk of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the war.
"The Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a pre-emptive invasion has become more than embarrassing," he said. "It appears to this senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing international law, under false premises."
He continued, "When it comes to shedding American blood, wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie -- not oil, not revenge, not re-election, not somebody's grand pipe dream of a democratic domino theory."
Byrd said the truth will eventually emerge "like it always does." "And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall," he said.
The mobile labs Powell referred to were discovered in northern Iraq in recent weeks. One was discovered last week near Mosul, Iraq, by members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division. That one was made up of refrigeration units and piping, compatible with weapons production, according to military sources. There was also believed to be a spraying device. A similar lab was found the week before, also in northern Iraq. Both were turned over to U.S. authorities for further testing.
www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
--- End Message ---
