Newsweek exclusive: Bush’s Iraq-al Qaida link was phony and based on faked documents. Get your morning upset stomach right here:
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 7:07 p.m. ET Oct. 26, 2005
Oct. 26, 2005 – A secret draft CIA report raises new questions about a principal argument used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq: the claim that Saddam Hussein was “harboring” notorious terror leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi prior to the American invasion.The allegation that Zarqawi had visited Baghdad in May 2002 with Saddam’s sanction—purportedly for medical treatment—was once a centerpiece of the administration’s arguments about Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Zarqawi’s alleged visit in his speech to the United Nations Security Council. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred obliquely to Zarqawi’s purported trip as an example of “bulletproof” evidence that the administration had assembled linking Saddam’s regime with Al Qaeda.
But like the uranium yellowcake claims—since determined to be fraudulent—that are at the heart of the CIA leak case, the administration’s original allegations about Zarqawi’s trip also seem to be melting away. An updated CIA re-examination of the issue recently concluded that Saddam’s regime may not have given Zarqawi “safe haven” after all.
Here’s the part that made me spit out my morning coffee because it’s just too much like the faked documents from Italy that supposedly showed that Iraq was seeking yellowcake from Niger:
The new report is only the latest chink in the armor of the alleged Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. Last year, the September 11 Commission found there was no “collaborative” relationship between the Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden; one high-level Al Qaeda commander—who had been cited by Powell as testifying to talks about chemical- and biological-warfare training—later recanted his claims. But the Pentagon and Cheney’s office have been reluctant to abandon the case: in the months after U.S. and allied forces deposed Saddam, NEWSWEEK has learned, Iraqi informants approached U.S. intelligence personnel with what purported to be caches of documents proving that Saddam’s dealings with Al Qaeda were extensive. (One cache of documents even claimed that six of 19 of the September 11 hijackers had been trained to fly in Iraq.)
Current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials said that when officials at the Bush White House learned about the existence of documents linking Saddam to Al Qaeda, they became very excited and pressured intelligence agencies to work quickly to validate and decipher them. However, the CIA ultimately established that most key documents about the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection turned over were faked—just like the documents purporting to show Iraqi purchases of uranium.
We now have 2,000 Americans killed in this war. They died because Dick Cheney was hoaxed by forged and faked documents. Osama bin Lauden walks around free and we can’t turn on the lights and water in Baghdad after millions of dollars and more than a year of occupation. We are estranged from most of our traditional allies and despised by millions of ordinary people all over the world. This war is the most expensive, most self destructive foreign policy blunder in the entire 200 years of American history.