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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/
AR2006090800777.html

Iraq's Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War
Links Were Cited to Justify U.S. Invasion, Report Says

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 9, 2006; Page A01

A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly
disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while
senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links
to justify invading Iraq.

Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda's overtures and
tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained
former deputy prime minister, has told the FBI that Hussein "only
expressed negative sentiments about [Osama] bin Laden."
        

A Senate report on prewar intelligence found no evidence of ties between
al-Qaeda and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, pictured here
testifying in Baghdad on Aug. 21, 2006.
A Senate report on prewar intelligence found no evidence of ties between
al-Qaeda and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, pictured here
testifying in Baghdad on Aug. 21, 2006. (Daniel Berehulak - AP)
Intelligence

The report also said exiles from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) tried
to influence U.S. policy by providing, through defectors, false
information on Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
capabilities. After skeptical analysts warned that the group had been
penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including Iran's, a 2002
White House directive ordered that U.S. funding for the INC be
continued.




In a classified January 2003 report, for instance, the CIA concluded
that Hussein "viewed Islamic extremists operating inside Iraq as a
threat." But one day after that conclusion was published, Levin noted,
Vice President Cheney said the Iraqi government "aids and protects
terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda."

In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded
that "Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful [chemical
and biological weapons] knowledge or assistance." A year later, Bush
said: "Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological
weapons training."


"It is such a blatant misleading of the United States, its people, to
prepare them, to position them, to, in fact, make them enthusiastic or
feel that it's justified to go to war with Iraq," said Sen. John D.
Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee's vice chairman. "That kind of
public manipulation I don't know has any precedent in American history."
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