Chalk one up for Obama’s Iraq Solution
Posted by: Neocon in Iraq, Terrorism, tags: accusations, al qaeda network, bulletproof, casual contacts, current situation in iraq, hot air, hundred million, iraq problem, iraqi documents, iraqi exiles, iraqi regime, kurds, latch, mcclatchy newspapers, saddam hussein, security services, shiite muslims, situation in iraq, terrorist groups, terrorist network(via Hot Air) As we all know, Obama’s solution to the Iraq problem is to have never gone there in the first place. His supporters will no doubt latch onto this latest study.
An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network.
The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy Newspapers. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.
The new study of the Iraqi regime’s archives found no documents indicating a “direct operational link” between Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.
Correct me if I’m wrong, and I’m sure there are one hundred million liberal websites on the internet chock full of adminstration quotes in the lead up to the war, but I don’t recall anyone making the claim that there were proven “direct, operational links” between Iraq and Al Qaeda. As far as I’m aware, there were casual contacts that we know of between the State and the Al Qaeda network, but I don’t remember anyone making the case that Al Qaeda was getting goodies from Saddam in 2002 or 2003. Operational implies that there was plot scheming going on between the two. It’s similar to the accusations that the administration played heavily on links between Iraq and 9/11, which they didn’t.
The article mentions Rumsfeld’s bulletproof line, but that statement isn’t about operational links. It’s about contact, so go figure. Also, the article purposefully misrepresents the current situation in Iraq with this line:
As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al-Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq.
“The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims,” the president said.
This is factually false. There is no question that Al Qaeda is in Iraq NOW, just look at the letters between Al Qaeda and Zarqawi, which is what Bush was talking about in the quote. He wasn’t referring to Al Qaeda being on the offensive in Iraq during the pre-war period. So feel free to perceive any bias in the article as you will.
There’s more that can be said about this, defenses and attacks, but I don’t know if any of us want to hear it. At this point I think people fall into roughly four camps. One, you believe that the war was an intentional lie or massive mistake. Two, you believe the pre-war intelligence was horrible but we have to finish the job. Three, you believe the justifications for war were sound and you want to finish the job. Four, you believe the justifications for the war were sound, we won’t know for a long time what was actually going on in Iraq, and you want to finish the job.
I’m somewhere between the last two, but as Saddam’s financial support for homicide bombers in Israel points out, it was the right thing to do. Saddam was a tyrant. We’re better off with him six feet under.
Oversimplification to be sure, but I think that’s about where we are. As the very end of the article states:
However, the U.S. intelligence official, who has read the full report, played down the prospect of any major new revelations, saying, “I don’t think there’s any surprises there.”
And the part of the new report that will be ignored?
While the documents reveal no Saddam-al-Qaida links, they do show that Saddam and his underlings were willing to use terrorism against enemies of the regime and had ties to regional and global terrorist groups, the officials said.
Gateway Pundit calls ‘em on the no Al-Qaeda in Iraq claim.
