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September 17, 2005

No connection between Iraq and al Qaeda?

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The left cites the 9/11 Commission Report as definitive on the subject of there being supposedly no connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. The report never claimed to be the last word, and, indeed, a lot more has been learned since then. The Weekly Stndard publishes an important report on what we have learned:

FOR MANY, the debate over the former Iraqi regime's ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network ended a year ago with the release of the 9/11 Commission report. Media outlets seized on a carefully worded summary that the commission had found no evidence "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States" and ran blaring headlines like the one on the June 17, 2004, front page of the New York Times: "Panel Finds No Qaeda—Iraq Tie."

But this was woefully imprecise. It assumed, not unreasonably, that the 9/11 Commission's conclusion was based on a firm foundation of intelligence reporting, that the intelligence community had the type of human intelligence and other reporting that would allow senior—level analysts to draw reasonable conclusions. We know now that was not the case.

John Lehman, a 9/11 commissioner, spoke to The Weekly Standard at the time the report was released. "There may well be——and probably will be——additional intelligence coming in from interrogations and from analysis of captured records and so forth which will fill out the intelligence picture. This is not phrased as——nor meant to be——the definitive word on Iraqi Intelligence activities."

Lehman's caution was prescient. A year later, we still cannot begin

to offer a "definitive" picture of the relationships entered into by Saddam Hussein's operatives, but much more has already been learned from documents uncovered after the Iraq war. The evidence we present below, compiled from revelations in recent months, suggests an acute case of denial on the part of those who dismiss the Iraq—al Qaeda relationship.

Read the whole thing.

Clarice Feldman   7 10 05