Senate: No Prewar Saddam-al-Qaida Ties

[dirk digler]

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/08/D8K0PV600.html

Senate: No Prewar Saddam-al-Qaida Ties
Sep 08 12:51 PM US/Eastern

By JIM ABRAMS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON


There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war.

The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.

The report comes at a time that Bush is emphasizing the need to prevail in Iraq to win the war on terrorism while Democrats are seeking to make that policy an issue in the midterm elections.

It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates," according to excerpts of the 400-page report provided by Democrats.

Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaida. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June this year.

White House press secretary Tony Snow played down the report as "nothing new."

"In 2002 and 2003, members of both parties got a good look at the intelligence we had and they came to the very same conclusions about what was going on," Snow said. That was "one of the reasons you had overwhelming majorities in the United States Senate and the House for taking action against Saddam Hussein," he said.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the committee, said the long- awaited report was "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts" to link Saddam to al-Qaida.

The administration, said Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., top Democrat on the committee, "exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe _ contrary to the intelligence assessments at the time _ that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attacks."

The chairman of the committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said it has long been known that prewar assessments of Iraq "were a tragic intelligence failure."

But he said the Democratic interpretations expressed in the report "are little more than a vehicle to advance election-year political charges." He said Democrats "continue to use the committee to try and rewrite history, insisting that they were deliberately duped into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime."

The panel report is Phase II of an analysis of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The first phase, issued in July 2004, focused on the CIA's failings in its estimates of Iraq's weapons program.

The second phase has been delayed as Republicans and Democrats fought over what information should be declassified and how much the committee should delve into the question of how policymakers may have manipulated intelligence to make the case for war.

The committee is still considering three other issues as part of its Phase II analysis, including statements of policymakers in the run up to the war.

[CHIEF4EVER]

But he said the Democratic interpretations expressed in the report "are little more than a vehicle to advance election-year political charges." He said Democrats "continue to use the committee to try and rewrite history, insisting that they were deliberately duped into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime."



And the truth will set you free.....:clap:

[memyselfI]

I can't decide if this is the Senate coming clean because they see it as politically expedient or because they had no choice. Perhaps both.

Will it change the minds of any of the 35% who are still clinging to the administration's lies???? Nope.

[banyon]

Eh, what do Senate Republicans know?

Those LWNJ's.

[jAZ]

My money is that this is the lone outcome of the "Phase II" of the Iraq investigation.

It doesn't deal at all with the question of adminsitration mis-use or hyping of doubtful and discredited intel.

This portion clearly should have been included in the Phase I portion of the whitewash. That it was held until after the 2004 election is in-and-of-itself a discredit to the entire process.

Tony Snow is right in that this is old news. The new news is that they are just now letting this out. In an effort to try to take away this issue of an incomplete Phase II, they pretend to "make progress" by revealing something that technically should have already been revealed... And trying to get the policial advantage of looking good without actually making any public process on the part of the invesgiation that will most certainly expose them all as completely frauds.

[jettio]

If patteeu reads this report he is going to have to spit out the pacifier that he has to suck on to convince himself that B*sh's precise use of language prevented the bullsh*t he was spewing from turning into horsesh*t.

How many elections have to cause postponements of a presentation of an objective analysis?

Pat Roberts is a disgrace, to use a military term, he is a useless tit.

[dirk digler]

*crickets*

[jettio]

*crickets*

What would you expect?

B*sh's defenders have spent the last three years making arguments that B*sh knows are nonsense and that he will not even make himself.

It is also obvious that Pat Roberts and the GOP do not want the public to know the full story of how B*sh manipulated Congress and the public into appeasing him and his foolish idea to have an unnecessary war for sh*ts and giggles.