The Coverup Continues

29 November 2005 |permalink | email article

An increasingly defensive President and Vice President continue to hammer on a central theme: there was either an explicit or implied link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in terms of the 9/11 attacks - sufficient justification to rush to war in Iraq when the real enemy was operating out of Afghanistan.

But in another piece of serious investigative reporting about the Bush administrationís prewar propaganda last week, Murray Waas wrote this in the nonpartisan National Journal that 10 days after the attacks:

ìPresident Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and there was scant evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.î

This information was contained in the Presidentís Daily Brief, a CIA assessment also shared with the vice president and other high government officials.

Waas also finds ìfew credible reportsî of Iraq-Al Qaeda contacts involved Husseinís efforts to infiltrate Islamic terrorist groups, which he regarded as anathema to his secular regime. Apparently the Iraqi dictatorís antipathy to Islamic radicals in 2001 was the same as in 1983.

That year, Donald Rumsfeld, a Reagan emissary, embraced Saddam as a secular ally in the U.S. struggle against Iranís theocratic fascist rulers. Contemplate this cynical flip-flop about making nice then with a bloody tyrant and wonder how Rumsfeld can today keep a straight face in his Pentagon briefings.

The New York Timesí Frank Rich has it right: Bush and Cheney should release the rest of the Presidentís Daily Briefs and other prewar documents that are trickling out instead of fighting the release of such information. That should include unclassified documents found in post-invasion Iraq requested from the Pentagon by the pro-war, neoconservative Weekly Standard.

Instead, the undynamic duo continues to dissemble. Rumsfeld, 22 years after embracing Saddam, now says ìitís timeî for the Iraqis to take charge of their country. No wonder a growing majority of Americans will question today’s rosy new White House strategy for victory which so differs from the facts. Update to follow.

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