|
|
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
|
Hussein ties to al Qaeda appear faulty
|
|---|
| Parent(s) |
Issue
|
| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Mar 05, 2004 12:38am |
| Logged |
0
|
| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Miami Herald |
| News Date | Friday, March 5, 2004 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The administration's case on ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda relied on intelligence that was weaker than that on Iraq's illegal weapons programs.
By WARREN P. STROBEL, JONATHAN S. LANDAY AND JOHN WALCOTT
wstrobel@krwashington.com
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's assertion that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda -- one of the administration's central arguments for a preemptive war -- appears to have been based on even less solid intelligence than the administration's claims that Iraq had hidden stocks of chemical and biological weapons.
Nearly a year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has turned up to verify allegations of Hussein's links with al Qaeda, and several key parts of the administration's case have either proved false or seem increasingly doubtful.
Senior U.S. officials now say there never was any evidence that Hussein's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were in league. At most, there were occasional meetings.
Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community never concluded that those meetings produced an operational relationship, American officials said. That verdict was in a secret report by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence that was updated in January 2003, on the eve of the war.
''We could find no provable connection between Saddam and al Qaeda,'' a senior U.S. official acknowledged. |
| Share |
|
|
2¢
|
|
| Article | Read Full Article |
|
| Date |
Category |
Headline |
Article |
Contributor |
|
|
