Hopefully, this lie will die
Joshua Foust on Mar 12 2008 at 3:40 am | Filed under: Around the Web
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 study was sponsored by the Pentagon. Do you think Doug Feith allows for this in his new 900-page “it was everyone else’s fault” book? Of course not. But, as both Ackerman and Balloon Juice note, being horribly wrong about this kind of thing certainly didn’t prevent anyone from advancing their careers tremendously.
Nothing says “DC” quite like failing upwards.
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Somehow this doesn’t make me feel any less positive that taking out Saddam was a good thing.
Perhaps, with the salient point that everyone in the Middle East, save perhaps Israel, provided “some support” to other terrorist groups. In those terms, I don’t see how you can meaningfully distinguish between Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Egypt, or (hell) Pakistan. Yes he was a bad man. No one here is arguing otherwise. But was he bad enough, in 2002-2003, to warrant the invasion? I have my doubts about that.
Well, strategically speaking, it just wasn’t possible to tackle the Middle East without taking care of the wild card first. Since everyone thought Saddam had bio/chemo weapons capability, his reaction couldn’t be left to chance. But that’s just the strategy of taking him out. The follow-on strategy (or lack thereof) was what was really screwed up.
And as far as the “lie” being perpetrated, no one has been saying that Saddam and al Qaeda had operational ties. We do know that they were in contact with one another, and that some negotiations had taken place (to no avail). And it’s common knowledge that Saddam held a conference for international terrorists in Baghdad. Throw in the fact that some of those terrorist groups supported by Saddam likely had ties (perhaps only tangentially) to al Qaeda and leaving Saddam around seems like a bad gamble IMHO.
Actually, Doug Feith and his associates (which include Dick Cheney and others) have been adamant for years about operational ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Until recently, National Review and the Weekly Standard routinely mentioned the ties between Saddam and AQ. And in 2002 Bush’s speeches were rife with talks of these same supposed operational ties. So calling it a lie isn’t too far fetched - there was no evidence to say so in the first place (the infamous “Prague meetins” was disproven almost as soon as it was broadcast), and now there is concrete evidence it just didn’t exist.
So calling it a lie really isn’t that big a stretch.
C’mon, Josh. You know each one of those charges is false. Do I really have to trot out the same old evidence? No one in the administration ever declared that there were operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein (and, no, one word answers to loaded questions from reporters does not count). The Prague-Atta thing has never been disproved (the cell phone thing? Car rentals? Really?), and in fact the Czechs still stand behind the claim, but even so the Administration backed off that “evidence” pretty early on. Furthermore, saying that there were no “operational ties” between the parties is not the same as saying there were no ties whatsoever. We KNOW there were ties. The fact that they never really amounted to anything is why they weren’t operational.
And the only reason there is concrete evidence…
What was unknown at the time was how extensive Saddam’s ties to terrorism (not just AQ) were. Also unknown was just what state his WMD programs and stockpile really were.
Saddam was maintaining a facade to stave off invasion by Iran, and not worrying about playing bluff with the world, and in particular the U.S. under President Bush was going to do to his life expectancy.
Operational ties?
I honestly don’t recall anyone claiming that Saddam was in bed with Bin Laden. I mean, seriously. Saddam and the 625,000 dead Iraqi children that the United States’ sanctions killed were, however, one of Bin Laden’s excuses for 9-11.
No one remembers those dead kids.
Probably because they weren’t real, but there you go.
In any case, there were a lot of reasons that Saddam was a serious problem as well as a number of reasons that it made sense to move the conflict out of Afghanistan as much as possible, though those are sort of cold reasons… unpleasant. And Saddam didn’t need to have operational ties to anyone in order to support them, to tolerate their presence, allow them space to train or to serve as a cause for those looking for excuses.
Guys, c’mon.
“Bush stands by al Qaeda, Saddam link”
There’s the story whereby Dick Cheney (with rumored help from Donald Rumsfeld) would systematically undercut the intelligence findings of the CIA which said there were no ties between Saddam and AQ, leak rumors of evidence pointing to a collaborative relationship to press outlets like the New York Times, then appear on the Sunday talk shows to discuss the leaked stories.
Then there are studies linking consumption of certain media sources, namely Fox News, to beliefs that Saddam had ties to Osama bin Laden.
Then there is Bush’s letter to Congress in which he states attacking Iraq is “consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”
So please, do not insult my intelligence by claiming “no one” ever said there was a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The President and Vice President were doing so for years. And it is a lie that should, at long last, die—for lack of any evidence.
Josh, believe whatever you want, but it’s indicative of the veracity of your claims that you can’t produce even one quote from the Bush administration that there were operational ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
Seriously. Do you believe those “studies”? And even if you do, you haven’t produced a single lie told by someone in the Administration.
And with respect to this:
You do realize that this is simply mirroring of the language laid out in the AUMF?
That’s how cases are made. One presents their evidence and claims that it meets the standard set out by the court or legislature. Every case, in every district, in every court. Why should it be any different here?
Michael, I’m perfectly aware of that—the letter stated as much. The point is that is draws a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, claiming the former was partially responsible for the latter. That would involve operational ties. Unless you’re claiming no one ever used the exact phrase “operational ties” (a claim that would take months of intensive research to determine, something I think neither of us is willing to do), then I don’t know how you’re distinguishing “operational” and “regular” ties.
As for my inability to produce one quote from the Bush administration… umm, follow that link (here it is again) to the Frontline episode which features reams of interviews with former Bush administration officials who actually say the very same thing (and discuss the extremely deceptive way these issues were discussed in the days leading up to our invasion—one of the primary reasons senior officials like Paul Pillar resigned in protest). It would have been extremely laborious to reproduce all of the quotes in which they discuss the manipulation of shaking intel of ties between the two to appear bullet proof. Or, to put it differently, I wasn’t insulting your intelligence by laying out a long trail of crumbs.
For the record, I think Kieth put his finger on a reasonable explanation for the uncertainty leading up to the war: Saddam was fronting one thing in public (the illusion of links to terrorism and the possession of WMD to warn off Iran) while the reality is different. We have intelligence agencies to cut through the bull and arrive at a reasonable idea of the reality under the rhetoric. Most of the intelligence we had about Iraq at the time, which was precious little, actually pointed to the lack of WMD and the lack of ties between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. The very few dissenting reports that suggested, without much evidence beyond scattered testimony of extracted HUMINT assets, such ties, were elevated as prime over the reams of contradictory evidence suggesting these assets were unreliable.
That is a deception. And, to contradict a point I think Kieth wanted to make, saying we can rest easy because the invasion showed Iraq to be a phantom threat isn’t very comforting.
“So please, do not insult my intelligence by claiming “no one” ever said there was a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.”
You forgot to say “operational” connection.
For several years now the insistence of anti-war sorts to couch the whole issue as a whole bunch of completely discrete concerns, nothing having to do with anything else or related to anything else, has annoyed me to no end. People who should certainly know better insist that Iraq has nothing to do with anything other than Iraq… and I’m not saying this applies to you, Joshua, because I don’t know you well enough to say. Iraq is *connected* to everything in the world. Somehow. Our response and reaction to Bin Laden is connected to *everything*. Every relationship our country has. With everyone.
The question isn’t, “Is Saddam Hussein connected to Al Qaeda?” the question is “HOW is Saddam Hussein connected to Al Qaeda?”
If he was “operationally” connected to Al Qaeda is an interesting question, certainly. But trying to prove that *this* entirely discrete person/event is connected to *that* entirely discrete person/event, operationally or otherwise, is based entirely on the assumption that the events are discrete.
Synova, that’s a fair point to make (and touché). I think my body of writing would indicate I have larger strategic concerns, and while I think an over-focus on Iraq actually serves to hurt our overall interests, both within the Middle East and beyond it (strategic, personnel, and resource interests are all negatively impacted). And I’m certainly not advocating the consideration of conflict in isolation; if anything, I go to the opposite extreme, and place too much emphasis on interconnectedness.
That being said, I also have gone through a rather painful process over the past few years of realizing that nearly every reason I thought justified the war in Iraq has been shown to be false—weapons, capability, terrorism, international law, stability and grand strategy, and so on. With that in mind, especially seeing, despite Michelle Malkin’s angry disseminating, that the ties between Saddam and “al Qaeda affiliates” (a clever term that is a great reduction from the old claims of connection to al Qaeda proper) still didn’t reach the “operational” level (which I take to include direct, strategic interactions, direct funding of a sufficiently large amount beyond simple statements of intent, and so on), my heart sinks… as it feels like yet another way I was catastrophically wrong about the war.
I think you’re right in saying that we need to examine Iraq both inside and outside its own context. But it is by doing that—by comparing, say, the very real collaboration between elements within Pakistan and al Qaeda to what some claim passes for collaboration between Saddam and AQ Affiliates—that, again, I can’t help believing the “Saddam/al Qaeda” line was simply another falsehood.
Oh, I think the US is well enough justified in our actions. But that doesn’t mean that the situation demanded that response or that going to war in Iraq was the best option.
I tend to think it was at least a “better than some” option, though considering it’s not reversible I don’t know that that is relevant to anything much.