Washington Times: British report links al Qaeda, Baghdad

A British government report made public yesterday provides new information showing that al Qaeda terrorists had contacts with Iraqi intelligence in developing chemical arms and that the group worked with a Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist.

The special report by former top civil servant Robin Butler on British prewar intelligence found gaps in reporting on Iraq's weapons and also disclosed new details of terrorist activities of al Qaeda associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is leading attacks in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

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A March 2003 British intelligence report stated that Zarqawi "has established sleeper cells in Baghdad, to be activated during a U.S. occupation of the city."

...The report also said that "al Qaeda-associated terrorists continued to arrive in Baghdad in early March."

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British intelligence assessments of connections between al Qaeda and Saddam's government were similar to U.S. intelligence assessments, the report said, adding that there were "contacts between al Qaeda and the Iraqi Directorate General of Intelligence since 1998."
"Those reports described al Qaeda seeking toxic chemicals as well as other conventional terrorist equipment," the report said. "Some accounts suggested that Iraqi chemical experts may have been in Afghanistan during 2000."
The British concluded that the contacts did not lead to "practical cooperation" because of mutual distrust.
"Intelligence nonetheless indicates that ... meetings have taken place between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al Qaeda operatives," the report said. "Some reports also suggest that Iraq may have trained some al Qaeda terrorists since 1998. Al Qaeda has shown interest in gaining chemical and biological expertise from Iraq, but we do not know whether any such training was provided."

UPI - Nuclear arms reportedly found in Iraq

Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad, official sources said Wednesday.

The missiles wer found in trenches near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, discovered after Iraqi security captured Baath party official Khoder al-Douri, who revealed their location.

The report could not be authenticated by the interior ministry or the national security department, but the paper noted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiar Zibari made a surprise request recently to Mohammed el-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to resume inspections for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Iraq Interior Ministry Says Report on Nukes 'Stupid'

Iraq's Interior Ministry dismissed as "stupid" a report in a local newspaper Wednesday that said three nuclear missiles had been found near the town of Tikrit.

A senior U.S. military official told reporters he had no information on the report in the newspaper al-Sabah. He said officials were checking the report.

WMDs never Bush's main focus: Clinton

Former president of the United States Bill Clinton says the Bush administration may have used claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for going to war against the country.

In an interview with the ABC's Enough Rope program, Mr Clinton says he believes the main concern for the administration was to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

"To shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, to make Israel feel more secure and to give America more leverage in making peace between Palestinians and Israelis," he said.

"I think that in the beginning this whole weapons of mass destruction thing for them was maybe a good way for them to get their foot in the door, but not the major issue for them."

Iraq Uranium Claim Gets Some Support

also found here and here

It was one of the first signs that the intelligence used to go to war in Iraq was wrong: White House repudiation of 16 words in last year's State of the Union speech that had suggested Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium in Africa. Yet even as two recent reports sharply criticized prewar intelligence, they also suggested President Bush's claim may not have been totally off-base.

A British report concluded that Bush's statement and a similar one by Prime Minister Tony Blair were "well-founded." In his speech, Bush had attributed the uranium claim to the British government.

A Senate Intelligence Committee report found inadequate evidence that deposed Iraqi President Saddam had been rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. It cited various reports, however, that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. Thus, although Bush cited only British evidence that was determined to have been inconclusive, other intelligence files clearly contained other inconclusive evidence of the truth of the claim.

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That claim came under scrutiny after the International Atomic Energy Agency determined that documents purportedly showing Iraq buying uranium from Niger were fake. After Wilson's op-ed appeared, the White House said including the 16 words in the State of the Union was a mistake because the assertion was not well enough corroborated to merit mention in a State of the Union speech. The British have maintain consistently that their intelligence was not based on the forged documents.

But the Senate committee disclosed other intelligence suggesting that Iraq was pursuing uranium.

The committee cited separate reports received from foreign intelligence services on Oct. 15, 2001, and Feb. 5, 2002, and March 25, 2002. The State Department doubted the accuracy of the reports, but the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency had more confidence in them.

Though Wilson reported to U.S. officials there was "nothing to the story" that Niger sold uranium to Iraq, the CIA and DIA were intrigued by one element of his trip. Wilson had said a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Mayaki, mentioned a visit from an Iraqi delegation in 1999 that expressed interest in expanding commercial ties with Niger, the world's third largest producer of mined uranium. Mayaki believed this meant they were interested in buying uranium.

The British inquiry said it was generally accepted that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999, and there was intelligence from several sources that the visit was to acquire uranium. "Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible," the report said.

The Senate committee also described various reports about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from French, British and unidentified foreign governments.

An internal CIA memo from June 17, 2003, said, "We no longer believe there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad."

AP - Intelligence report: Jordanian radical seeded Baghdad with sleeper cells ready to attack U.S. forces

British intelligence received reports ahead of the Iraq war saying Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi seeded Baghdad with ''sleeper cells'' to attack U.S.-led forces, and that he may have received chemical and biological weapons from northern Iraq.

The information, released as part of a review of British intelligence, comes as the Iraqi government said Thursday that it sees signs of increasing coordination in the insurgency between al-Qaida-linked terrorist groups and the remains of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime.

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Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of pro-Taliban fighters possibly linked to al-Qaida fled the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan after Sept. 11 and made their way to northern Iraq, where they linked up with Ansar al-Islam, a local group that controlled a small enclave on the Iranian-Iraqi border, according to intelligence reports and analysts.

Al-Zarqawi is believed to have been part of that group and to have had a role in the running of Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq during 2002.

U.S. and British aircraft pounded the Ansar base, which was within the Kurdish zone, for days at the start of the Iraq war before U.S. and allied Kurdish forces entered the area.

Before the war, U.S. officials said they had evidence that Ansar had tested chemical and biological weapons at the site. The new British intelligence report notes the same thing.

U.S. forces later searched the area for traces of poisons and toxins but there were no reports of any chemical or biological weapons found. It is not clear if the toxins and poisons were destroyed in the attack.

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''We have learned there is a kind of escalating coordination between remains of Saddam's regime and al-Qaida elements such as al-Zarqawi,'' [Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi said in an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat.

Daily Times: 'Saddam Hussein had link with Al Qaeda'

Saddam Hussein had links with terrorists like Carlos the Jackal and Abu Nidal and groups connected to Al Qaeda, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on Wednesday.

"The record of Saddam shows very well his connections to international terrorists, like Carlos and Abu Nidal," Allawi told BBC radio. "We know for sure that he had established links with chieftains in Sudan, to work closely with Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda style organisations," he said.

Knight Ridder Gets It Wrong, by Stephen Hayes

...By Wednesday, Knight Ridder had posted a correction. "President Bush's comments about terrorism were incorrectly reported in that saying the president insisted there was an operational link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The president suggested that such a link existed, but didn't explicitly make that connection."

The correction is incorrect. The president never even "suggested that such a link"--the referent is an "operational link"--existed.

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How many terrorist groups have "established formal relationships" with their state sponsors? State sponsors often--but not always--prefer to keep their terrorist connections loose and informal so that they might avoid detection, deniability being a major goal of states that use terrorists to do their dirty work.

The Senate Intelligence Committee language is important for another reason: Documents from the Iraqi Intelligence service do suggest an "established relationship," just not "an established formal relationship." A report in the June 25, 2004, New York Times, was based on an internal Iraqi Intelligence document: When bin Laden left the Sudan in 1996, according to the Iraqi Intelligence document, Iraqi Intelligence began "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of [bin Laden's] current location." The report also indicates that bin Laden "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative" and that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."

The Iraqis themselves, then, talked about the connection with al Qaeda in terms of the "relationship" and "cooperation." At the same time, bin Laden was reluctant to formalize the relationship.

Does the lack of an "established formal relationship" preclude cooperation? Not according to bin Laden. The same internal Iraqi Intelligence document reports that bin Laden "requested joint operations against foreign forces" based in Saudi Arabia.

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the Senate Intelligence Committee report, based on CIA findings, concludes not only that the Iraqi regime "certainly" knew of Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad, but also that Zarqawi and his network were "operating" in the Iraqi capital and in northern Iraq.These facts were left out of the Knight Ridder story...

The New Groupthink, by William Safire

The salient news in the Senate Intelligence Committee report is this: all you have been hearing about "he lied to us" and "they cooked the books" is a lot of partisan nonsense.

The 511-page Senate report concluded this: Nobody in the White House or the Pentagon pressured the C.I.A. to change an intelligence analysis to conform to the judgment that the world would be a safer place with the monstrous Saddam overthrown.

Ah, second-guessers say, but what about "groupthink"? Before Gulf War I, the consensus held that Saddam was five to 10 years away from producing a nuclear bomb, but when we went in, we discovered that his W.M.D. were less than six months away.

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Today, as Election Day approaches, groupthink has swung back again, to this: Saddam not only had no terror weapons, but he had little or nothing to do with Al Qaeda — therefore, our liberation of Iraq was a waste of lives and money.

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Strange, considering how the nation's interest is riveted on this week's report on our Iraqi intelligence mistakes, how little interest was shown in the Senate Intelligence Committee's extensive report on the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000, which cost the lives of 17 American sailors.

The committee's staff director tells me that the 35-page document was disseminated to the intelligence community, but was never made public by Bob Graham, a Democrat who was chairman then. No reporter agitated for a copy until I just did.

If the committee was sharply critical of the C.I.A. in 2002, why wasn't the public alerted to the failures that led to the Cole bombing — and why wasn't action taken to shake up the place then?

BBC - Clinton for post-9/11 Iraq action

Bill Clinton says that no government could have failed to act against Iraq after the 11 September 2001 attacks in view of intelligence provided.

The former US president told the BBC that UK intelligence on the activity of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was more "aggressive" than Washington's.

He added that the world was right to demand weapons inspections in 2002.

But he said war could have been avoided if the UN had passed a resolution threatening military action.

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The former president told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that before the war everyone had thought that Iraq still had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles.

He said that while containment of Iraq was working the situation regarding Saddam Hussein was different after the 11 September attacks.

"The issue was not whether he would use [weapons of mass destruction] but whether he was likely to give them away or have them stolen," he said. "That's why the world supported inspections."

Reuters: Kerry Didn't Read Iraq Report Before Vote -- Aides

Democratic candidate John Kerry, whose campaign demanded to know on Wednesday whether President Bush read a key Iraq intelligence assessment, did not read the document himself before voting to give Bush the authority to go to war, aides acknowledged.

NY Times - Bush and C.I.A. Won't Release Paper on Prewar Intelligence

The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency have refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee a one-page summary of prewar intelligence in Iraq prepared for President Bush that contains few of the qualifiers and none of the dissents spelled out in longer intelligence reviews, according to Congressional officials.

Senate Democrats claim that the document could help clear up exactly what intelligence agencies told Mr. Bush about Iraq's illicit weapons. The administration and the C.I.A. say the White House is protected by executive privilege, and Republicans on the committee dismissed the Democrats' argument that the summary was significant.

The review, prepared for President Bush in October 2002, summarized the findings of a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's illicit weapons. Congressional officials said that notes taken by Senate staffers who were permitted to review the document show that it eliminated references to dissent within the government about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusions.

UN Admits Saddam Had WMD, by Alphapatriot

Yet another under-reported story that masks reality: last week the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) -- that group of Inspector Clouseaus who were stumbling around Iraq before the war while losing the game of hide-and-seek with Saddam's henchmen -- gave a briefing to the U.N. Security Council about the movement of Iraqi WMD out of the country before, during and after the war...

Iraq's Chemical and Biological Weapons Capacity, by Alex Knapp

I'm getting a little tired of the "no WMD in Iraq" stuff, because it's a complete misrepresentation of the findings of the Iraq Survey Group to date. So let's have a little history review, shall we?

The Butler Report

Jonah Goldberg offers the following links: Butler report download | summary, and the following selections from within:

We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the government's dossier, and by extension the prime minister in the House of Commons, were well founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's state of the union address of 2003 that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well founded.

and

Even now it would be premature to reach conclusions about Iraq's prohibited weapons. Much potential evidence may have been destroyed in the looting and disorder that followed the cessation of hostilities. Other material may be hidden in the sand, including stocks of agent or weapons. We believe that it would be a rash person who asserted at this stage that evidence of Iraqi possession of stocks of biological or chemical agents, or even of banned missiles, does not exist or will never be found. But as a result of our review, and taking into account the evidence which has been found by the ISG and debriefing of Iraqi personnel, we have reached the conclusion that prior to the war the Iraqi regime:

a) Had the strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited weapons programmes, including if possible its nuclear weapons programme, when UN inspection regimes were relaxed and sanctions were eroded or lifted.

b) In support of that goal, was carrying out illicit research and development, and procurement, activities, to seek to sustain its indigenous capabilities.

c) Was developing ballistic missiles with a range longer than permitted under relevant United Nations security council resolutions, but did not have significant - if any - stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment, or developed plans for using them.

Elsewhere...


AP - Report Cites U.K. Iraq Intelligence Flaws

Iraq had no stockpiles of useable chemical or biological weapons before the war, and British intelligence relied in part on "seriously flawed" or "unreliable" sources in deciding to join the U.S.-attack to oust Saddam Hussein, an official inquiry reported Wednesday.

Reuters - UK Probe Raps Flawed Iraq War Intelligence

Prime Minister Tony Blair was cleared on Wednesday of tricking Britain into invading Iraq but drew heat in a report for relying on pre-war intelligence ridden with flaws.

"We found no evidence to question the prime minister's good faith," Lord Butler said after releasing his report that damned Britain's justification for waging war against Baghdad.

While Blair placed undue weight on thin intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weaponry, Butler told reporters there was "no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead."

CNN - Iraq WMD claims 'seriously flawed' / Spy chief should keep job, says report

An official inquiry into the quality of British intelligence used to justify the Iraq war has found that some of the sources were "seriously flawed."

However, former senior civil servant Lord Butler said there was no evidence of deliberate distortion or culpable negligence by the spy services.

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report, by Dan Darling

Here's an analysis of the Senate report with an emphasis on what it says about Iraqi ties to terrorism.

MIT: Searchable Senate Intelligence Report

A searchable, text version of the Senate Intelligence report.

Report On The U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq (pdf)

Click headline above to download the full report in PDF.

New York Times summary: Excerpts From Two Senators' Views About Prewar Assessments of Iraq

BBC - Blair's Iraq evidence 'confusing'

Two former intelligence officers have cast doubts over Tony Blair's use of evidence in the run-up to war in Iraq.

...Dr Brian Jones, a retired top Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) official, told BBC's Panorama he was "confused" by Mr Blair's evidence in the Hutton Inquiry.

...Mr Blair told the inquiry there was "a tremendous amount of information and evidence coming across my desk as to the WMD and programmes associated with it that Saddam had".

But Dr Jones, a critic of the government's Iraq dossier, told Panorama: "Certainly no-one on my staff had any visibility of large quantities of intelligence of that sort."

He said how no-one knew what chemical or biological agents had been produced since the first Gulf War in 1991.

Spy Chiefs 'Retract WMD Intelligence'

Spy chiefs have retracted the intelligence behind Tony Blair’s claim that Iraq posed a "current and serious" threat, it was reported tonight.

The Prime Minister's case for war was supposedly based on evidence that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and was trying trying to produce more.

But MI6 has since withdrawn the assessment underpinning that case, a senior intelligence source has told BBC1's Panorama.

The rare step amounts to an admission that it was fundamentally unreliable, according to The Observer which reveals details of the interview.

Washington Post: Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission

Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

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Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

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The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June.

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Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.

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According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.

AP: Senate Report Offers Backing for Claim Iraq Sought Uranium in Africa

A Senate report criticizing false CIA claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the same time provides support for an assertion the White House repudiated: that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.

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French and British intelligence separately told the United States about possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger, the report said. The report from France is significant not only because Paris opposed the Iraq war but also because Niger is a former French colony and French companies control uranium production there.

Joseph Wilson, a retired U.S. diplomat the CIA sent to investigate the Niger story, also found evidence of Iraqi contacts with Nigerien officials, the report said.

Wilson told the committee that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki reported meeting with Iraqi officials in 1999. Mayaki said a businessman helped set up the meeting, saying the Iraqis were interested in "expanding commercial relations" with Niger - which Mayaki interpreted as an overture to buy uranium, Wilson said.

a photo from Iraq

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