Reports Wednesday morning that the 9/11 Commission has determined there was no cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida are completely false - and are undoubtedly driven by the media's determination to contradict the Bush administration's claims that such a link exists.
"9/11 Panel Says Iraq Rebuffed Bin Laden" reads the headline on the Associated Press report on today's Commission staff statement.
But that's not what the Commission staff report actually said.
The below passage, for instance, does more to confirm the Bush administration's claims of an Iraq-al Qaida link than it does to contradict them.
"The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin* to cease [support for anti-Saddam Islamists in Northern Iraq] and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda*.
"A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." [Staff Statement No. 15, Page 5]
Apparently never responded? How, pray tell, does the AP derive from those words the conclusive claim that Iraq "rebuffed" bin Laden?
The Commission statement continues:
"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
What's the evidence for this less-than-conclusive surmise?
"Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq," says the Commission.
Such a statement begs the question: Why does the Commission, let alone the press, take the word of two senior bin Laden associates over, say, Iraq's new prime minister, Iyad Allawi.
Last December he told the London Telegraph, "We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda."
Reacting to the discovery of an Iraqi intelligence document placing 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Baghdad two months before the attacks, he continued:
"This is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."
In fact, nowhere does the Commission make the claim that Iraq and al-Qaida never cooperated. What it does say is "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." [NewsMax italics]
Apparently Dr. Allawi's asssement counts for nothing.
Even so, it's worth noting that elsewhere in today's staff statement, the 9/11 Commission asserts:
"With al Qaeda at its foundation, Bin Ladin sought to build a broader Islamic Army that included terrorist groups from Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Oman, Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea. Not all [terrorist] groups from these states agreed to join, but at least one from each did." [Staff Statement No. 15, Page 3]
In other words, at least one terror group from Iraq did form an alliance with bin Laden.
Another problem: If the press is going to take today's staff statement as gospel, certain long-held media assumptions will need to be drastically revised, such as the widely accepted notion that al-Qaida was involved in the first World Trade Center bombing.
Not true, says the Commission.
"Whether Bin Ladin and his organization had roles in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center ... remains a matter of substantial uncertainty," the staff statement says, before insisting, "We have no conclusive evidence" of a bin Laden link. [Staff Statement No. 15, Page 6]
The same goes for "Operation Bojinka," the 1995 plot to hijack 12 airliners hatched by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that experts say was the blueprint for the 9/11 attacks.
"[Mohammed] was not, however, an al Qaeda member at the time of the Manilla [Bojinka] plot," Commission staffers say, even though they acknowledge that he went on to mastermind the 9/11 attacks.
The press is furiously spinning the 9/11 Commission staff statement in a bid to discredit the Bush administration. Americans should go to the Sept. 11 Commission Web site and read the conclusions for themselves: http://www.9-11commission.gov/
