The CIA concluded "a long time ago" that an al-Qaida associate who met with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia was not an officer in Saddam Hussein's army, as alleged Sunday by a Republican member of the 9/11 commission.
Commissioner John Lehman, who was Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan, said "new ... documents" indicated that "at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen," an elite army unit, "was a very prominent member of al-Qaida."
Lehman's remarks on NBC's "Meet the Press" lent support to the Bush administration's insistence that there were strong ties between Hussein and al-Qaida.
... The administration official said the CIA and U.S. Army obtained the lists of members of the Fedayeen shortly after the invasion of Iraq last year. Some, he said, had names "similar to" Ahmad Hikmat Shakir. But, he said, the CIA had concluded "a long time ago" that none were the al-Qaida associate. He would not say whether the al-Qaida associate is in U.S. custody. Other sources said he was not.
Newsday article
Commissioner John Lehman, who was Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan, said "new ... documents" indicated that "at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen," an elite army unit, "was a very prominent member of al-Qaida."
Lehman's remarks on NBC's "Meet the Press" lent support to the Bush administration's insistence that there were strong ties between Hussein and al-Qaida.
... The administration official said the CIA and U.S. Army obtained the lists of members of the Fedayeen shortly after the invasion of Iraq last year. Some, he said, had names "similar to" Ahmad Hikmat Shakir. But, he said, the CIA had concluded "a long time ago" that none were the al-Qaida associate. He would not say whether the al-Qaida associate is in U.S. custody. Other sources said he was not.
Names that sound alike. Gee. We've been having that same problem with detainees, airline no-fly lists, and Florida voter rolls.
Update 9:30 am: Details about the alleged connection that only muddies these waters - making it look more like the CIA and the administration are engaged in battle.
Update 4:30 pm: More from Billmon
Lehman said that, since the report was issued, new intelligence had arrived "from the interrogations in Guantanamo and Iraq and from captured documents. ... Some of these documents indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al-Qaida."
His comments were made after Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration's strongest advocate of an alleged link between Hussein and al-Qaida, said in an interview Friday that he, Cheney, "probably" saw intelligence not reviewed by the Sept. 11 commission.
In alleging that a Hussein army officer was an al-Qaida operative, Lehman also acknowledged that the claim "still has not been confirmed" by the commission. But he insisted that Cheney "was right when he said he may have things we [the commission] don't have yet."
... The claim that the Iraqi officer and al-Qaida figure are the same first appeared in a Wall Street Journal editorial on May 27. A similar account was then published in the June 7 edition of the Weekly Standard, which reported that the link was discovered by an analyst working for a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit under Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.
His comments were made after Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration's strongest advocate of an alleged link between Hussein and al-Qaida, said in an interview Friday that he, Cheney, "probably" saw intelligence not reviewed by the Sept. 11 commission.
In alleging that a Hussein army officer was an al-Qaida operative, Lehman also acknowledged that the claim "still has not been confirmed" by the commission. But he insisted that Cheney "was right when he said he may have things we [the commission] don't have yet."
... The claim that the Iraqi officer and al-Qaida figure are the same first appeared in a Wall Street Journal editorial on May 27. A similar account was then published in the June 7 edition of the Weekly Standard, which reported that the link was discovered by an analyst working for a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit under Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.
The Office of Special Plans? Because they came up with the other false evidence. Why not trust them on this one?
These people never feel ridiculous, do they? They never think, boy, I would probably be better off if I just shut up now, because the evidence just isn't there, and the more I claim publicly that gets refuted, the more I look like either a gullible dupe of the Bush administration or a willing lying participant.
On the other hand, we haven't heard from Condi lately. She's being awfully quiet.
But it appears that we will go on and on and on having to disprove every bit of false evidence the administration concocts for its war on
I think the administration, headed by Cheney and presided over by Chowderhead, manipulated people, events and evidence to fit what they wanted to do. Another idea that some people are more comfortable with is that they believed their own fantasies about bad guys.
I'll tell you a story. There was a man who went to see a psychiatrist. First, the shrink showed him a picture of crossed sticks and then one of hundreds of little dots. "What's that?" the shrink asked. Snakes and ants having sex, the man replied. The shrink told the man he was obsessed with sex. "What do you expect," the patient replied, "when you keep showing me dirty pictures?"
It's not surprising that an administration already bent on war would interpret every dot, every squiggly line, as evidence that Hussein and bin Laden were in cahoots. This made sense to Bush and Cheney since, as we have found out to our dismay, they cannot distinguish between one kind of evil and another. ... So deluded were our top guys that they invaded Iraq expecting that the major problem would be how to clean up after all the victory parades
Were there contacts between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda? Maybe. It's not inconceivable that someone in the regime wanted to keep an ear open. Were those contacts nefarious? Who knows? Did they lead in some way to the events of Sept. 11? It appears not. No evidence suggests that's the case, and the lack of such evidence is not proof of anything. It is not up to the critics of the war to prove the negative any more than it is up to astronomers to prove that the dark side of the moon is not made of green cheese. A little intellectual discipline is in order here.
WaPo column
It's not surprising that an administration already bent on war would interpret every dot, every squiggly line, as evidence that Hussein and bin Laden were in cahoots. This made sense to Bush and Cheney since, as we have found out to our dismay, they cannot distinguish between one kind of evil and another. ... So deluded were our top guys that they invaded Iraq expecting that the major problem would be how to clean up after all the victory parades
Were there contacts between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda? Maybe. It's not inconceivable that someone in the regime wanted to keep an ear open. Were those contacts nefarious? Who knows? Did they lead in some way to the events of Sept. 11? It appears not. No evidence suggests that's the case, and the lack of such evidence is not proof of anything. It is not up to the critics of the war to prove the negative any more than it is up to astronomers to prove that the dark side of the moon is not made of green cheese. A little intellectual discipline is in order here.
Too late.
Was Cheney lying or was he merely so driven by ideological or intellectual conviction that to him the occasional tree became a forest? It's hard to say. As my colleague Al Kamen reports, the vice president did indeed say it was "pretty well confirmed" that one of the Sept. 11 terrorists, Mohamed Atta, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official. Actually, that meeting has never been confirmed, and Cheney, for obvious reasons, has recently unconfirmed his statement, insisting he was never so definitive. Kamen confirmed he was.
Yeah. And I say he's not delusional. He's a calculating lying SOB. He chose himself for the position of Vice President when he was given the job of finding a suitable running mate for Bubbleboy. He thereafter provided huge no-bid contracts for the war industry company he was heading when he was given that job - a company from which he still gets dividends, and to which he no doubt intends to return if and when the American public finally catches on and throws him out of the White House. Dot. Dot. Dot. A little intellectual discipline is in order here, too.
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