John Kerry on Iraq

July 29, 2002, Kerry spoke to the moderate Democratic Leadership Council and said, "I agree completely with (the Bush) administration's goal of a regime change in Iraq. . . . Saddam Hussein is a renegade and outlaw who turned his back on tough conditions of surrender put in place by the United Nations in 1991."

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In an op-ed in the Sept. 6, 2002, New York Times, Kerry wrote: "If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act."

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During a May 3, 2003, debate among Democratic presidential candidates, Kerry said President Bush made "the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him."

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In a November 12, 1997, appearance on CNN's "Crossfire," Kerry criticized two U.S. allies for failing to oppose Saddam's failure to comply with the agreement that ended the Persian Gulf war: ".where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity.?"

Thousands of Iraqis Demand Saddam's Execution

Better late than never

Washington Times - Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials

Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered.

The recent discovery by the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition.

Two defense sources told The Washington Times that the ISG has interviewed Iraqis who told of Saddam's system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to the border, where they would send border inspectors away.

The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts.

The Yin Blog: Salman Pak -- The Smoking Gun Linking Iraq to 9/11?

Links and excerpts from Yin co-blogger Kevin Jon Heller.

NewsMax - Iraqi Physicist: 500-Ton Uranium Stockpile Not for Nukes

The physicist who ran Iraq's nuclear weapons program for 25 years before the U.S. liberation claimed on Wednesday that Saddam Hussein gave up his nuclear ambitions in 1991 - even though the Iraqi dictator maintained a 500-ton stockpile of uranium and kept his nuclear research team intact right up until March 2003.

In his first-ever broadcast interview, Jaffar Dhia Jaffar told the BBC that Saddam's al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons research facility was heavily damaged in the first Gulf War.

"Everything was destroyed, such that the program couldn't be restarted at the time at all, and it never restarted," he claimed.

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Jafar also failed to address findings by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which concluded last month:

"Iraq was procuring dual use equipment that had potential nuclear applications."

The Senate's investigation found that, "Iraq had kept its cadre of nuclear weapons personnel trained and in positions that could keep their skills intact for eventual use in a reconstituted nuclear program."

The Iraqi physicist declined to challenge the testimony of top U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who told Congress in March that Iraq had been "preserving and expanding its knowledge to design and develop nuclear weapons" throughout the 1990s.

One al Tuwaitha laboratory, Duelfer said, "was intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development."

Duelfer's contentions were bolstered by satellite photos published in the Washington Post in 2002 that showed new construction at the sprawling 23,000-acre facility.

More background on Jaffar Dhia Jaffar...

Iraq Watch:

In early March, Iraq's top two nuclear scientists decided to speak publicly about their country's banned weapon programs. While presenting a coauthored paper at a conference in Beirut, the "father" of Iraq's nuclear program, Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, admitted that Iraq tried to hide its weapon efforts when U.N. inspectors arrived in early 1991. But he claimed that all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and weapon material were destroyed that summer. On the sidelines of the conference, Noman Saad al-Noaimi, a former director-general of Iraq's nuclear program, told the Associated Press that in his "personal estimation" Iraq was three years away from producing a nuclear bomb before the 1991 war. Both scientists said they were certain that Iraq did not revive any of its WMD programs after 1991.

During the conference, Jaffar called for a probe into what was known by U.N. inspectors before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. According to Jaffar, the inspectors had concluded that Iraq was free of nuclear weapons, but failed to declare this frankly to the U.N. Security Council because of U.S. pressure.

FAS.org:

Iraq successfully concealed both the size and level of progress of its nuclear program. Four months after the June 1981 bombing by Israel of Iraq’s Osirak reactor, Jaffar Dhia Jaffar (deputy minister of industry, head of reactor physics at Tuwaitha and now believed to have been the head of Iraq’s nuclear weapon program) reportedly convinced Saddam Hussein that remaining in the NPT while embarking on a clandestine nuclear weapon program would present no serious difficulties...

Washington Post:

The man some regard as the father of Iraq's nuclear weapons program never aspired to the title, according to former colleagues now living in the West. Hussein used imprisonment and torture to persuade the British-trained physicist to help him in his quest to become the Arab world's first nuclear-armed head of state.

Among his punishments: being forced to watch as guards broke the back of an elderly man and left him to suffer in Jaffar's presence. "He recanted and returned to work," Hamza, a former subordinate, wrote in "Saddam's Bombmaker."

The deputy head of Iraq's atomic energy agency ultimately took command of Iraq's secret "Petrochemical-3" unit, which ran clandestine programs to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. At its height, the unit employed more than 20,000 people and cost an estimated $10 billion.

After his jailhouse conversion in the early 1980s, Jaffar promised to deliver Hussein a nuclear weapon within 10 years. By Western estimates he came very close -- perhaps as near as a few months -- when the program was disrupted by the outbreak of war in 1991.

ABC News:

Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, considered to be the godfather of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, is insisting that Iraq discontinued its nuclear weapons program after United Nations weapons inspections began in 1991, according to senior coalition intelligence officials.

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Jaffar fled to Syria soon after the military campaign in Iraq began, and surrendered to U.S. forces from a third Arab country.

Washington Post - The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story

As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush's contentions during the run-up to war.

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No Post reporter burrowed into the Iraqi WMD story more deeply than [Walter] Pincus, 71, a staff member for 32 of the last 38 years, whose messy desk is always piled high with committee reports and intelligence files. "The main thing people forget to do is read documents," said Pincus, wielding a yellow highlighter.

A white-haired curmudgeon who spent five years covering the Iran-contra scandal and has long been an expert on nuclear weapons, Pincus sometimes had trouble convincing editors of the importance of his incremental, difficult-to-read stories.

His longevity is such that he first met Hans Blix, who was the chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, at a conference in Ghana in 1959.

"The inspectors kept getting fed intelligence by our administration and the British and the French, and kept coming back and saying they couldn't find" the weapons, Pincus said. "I did one of the first interviews with Blix, and like everyone else he thought there would be WMDs. By January and February [of 2003], he was starting to have his own doubts. . . . What nobody talked about was how much had been destroyed," either under U.N. supervision after the Persian Gulf War or during the Clinton administration's 1998 bombing of Iraqi targets.

CNN.com - Kerry stands by 'yes' vote on Iraq war

Democratic presidential nomiee John Kerry said Monday he would not have changed his vote to authorize the war against Iraq, but said he would have handled things "very differently" from President Bush.

Bush's campaign has challenged Kerry to give a yes-or-no answer about whether he stood by the October 2002 vote which gave Bush authority to use military force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The question of going to war in Iraq has become a major issue on the campaign trail, especially in light of the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found there.

sigh...

The U.S. senator from Massachusetts said the congressional resolution gave Bush "the right authority for the president to have."

But he told reporters on a campaign swing through Arizona, "I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has." He challenged Bush to answer four questions.

"My question to President Bush is why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace?" Kerry asked. "Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?

"Why did he mislead America about how he would go to war? Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way that we deserve it and relieve a pressure from the American people?

"There are four, not hypothetical questions like the president's, but real questions that matter to Americans," Kerry said. "And I hope you'll get the answers to those questions because the American people deserve them."

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More than 900 American troops have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 that deposed Saddam. No WMD arsenal has been found, although a few aging gas shells have been located, and U.S. inspectors have said Iraq tried to conceal some weapons-related research from U.N. weapons inspectors.

Bush said Iraq had the ability to build weapons of mass destruction and had been deceiving weapons inspectors, who reported no sign of banned weapons in Iraq in the weeks before the invasion.

NewsMax - Iraq Survey Chief Duelfer: Saddam Was Developing Nukes

Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons development program at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer has told Congress.

In comments that received virtually no press coverage in the United States, Duelfer testified that Iraq was "preserving and expanding its knowledge to design and develop nuclear weapons." One Iraqi laboratory "was intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development," the top weapons inspector said.

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The former U.N. weapons inspector, who replaced David Kay as head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group last year, said that Saddam was financing his nuclear program by misappropriating funds from the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Program.

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Most of the recent nuclear research took place at Iraq's notorious al Tuwaitha weapons facility, where Saddam had stockpiled over 500 tons of yellow cake uranium ore since before the first Gulf War.

Iraq was also in talks with North Korea on the possibility of importing a 1,300 km missile system, the ISG chief revealed.

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In June of this year, the U.S. Energy Department removed 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium from al Tuwaitha.

Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press at the time that the low-enriched uranium stockpile could have produced enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb.

FOXNews - Iraq Evidence Led Feds to Albany Mosque

Information found in Iraq led federal investigators to become suspicious of an Albany, N.Y., mosque leader, FOX News has learned.

Last summer, U.S. troops discovered Yassin Muhhiddin Aref's name, telephone number and address in a book left behind in a vacated terrorist training camp, a U.S. official told FOX News. The book also revealed that Ansar al-Islam, the group running the camp, had given Aref a title: "the commander."

Aref also made several telephone calls to individuals in Iraq within the past year, the official said.

Aref, 34, is the Imam of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany, N.Y. He and one other mosque leader were arrested Thursday and charged with helping an undercover informant posing as a weapons dealer who was plotting to buy a shoulder-launched missile that would be used to kill the Pakistani ambassador in New York City.

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Earlier on Thursday, law enforcement officials said the men had possible ties to Ansar al-Islam, which has been linked to Usama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network. However, that link was not noted in court documents.

Ansar al-Islam has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and killings in Iraq, and has ties to the U.S.-led coalition's most-wanted terrorist there, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Insight - Saddam's WMD Have Been Found

New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported.

The Iraq War - A Summary

UPDATE: See also Part II.

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There were essentially five main reasons for the United States to use military force in Iraq:

1. to rid a sworn enemy of his WMD programs

2. to respond to the Iraqi dictator's funding and harboring of terrorists

3. to enforce the terms of a cease fire and 14 years of related UN resolutions

4. to prevent further human suffering and exhume the mass graves

5. to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East

Taken together, these reasons more than justify the U.S.-led military action to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Below is information that pertains to the first two reasons.

Iraqi WMDs

Highlights: thus far we have found

1. chemical and biological weapon systems plans and equipment

2. reference strains of biological weapons agents

3. new research on brucella and congo-crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin

4. a biological weapons lab

5. prohibited long-range missiles suitable for delivering WMDs

6. documents showing Saddam tried to obtain long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea

7. 10 or 12 sarin and mustard gas shells have been found in various locations in Iraq

8. gas centrifuge elements for enriching uranium, parts of a nuclear weapons program, buried in the back yard of Mahdi Obeidi, a nuclear scientist. Obeidi also gave up nuclear development documents and said there were other pieces of the puzzle hidden elsewhere.

9. a barrel of enriched uranium found near Mosul

10. Iraq was 3 years from a building a nuclear weapon, according to top nuclear scientists quoted by CNN

11. French, British and American intelligence that an Iraqi delegation approached Niger to purchase uranium. That contact was verified by former ambassador Joe Wilson, whose criticism of the administration is contradicted by the 9/11 commission report.

12. an Iraqi artillery shell filled with sarin gas, a drop of which will kill you

13. in October 2003, Kuwaiti security forces intercepted Iraqis attempting to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads to an unnamed European country

14. on January 16, 2003, UN weapons inspectors discovered 11 rocket warheads designed to deliver chemical weapons in a bunker 75 miles south of Baghdad.

15. Chief Weapons Inspector David Kay reported "dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002," including vials of live botulinum bacteria that were found hidden at the home of an Iraqi scientist. Botulinum is the single most poisonous substance known to mankind.

16. Kay's final report reveals Iraq's attempt to "revive its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2000 and 2001," and that "Baghdad was actively working to produce a biological weapon using the poison ricin."

17. Kay successor Charles Duelfer reported on March 30, 2004: "Iraq did have facilities suitable for the production of biological and chemical agents needed for weapons. It had plans to improve and expand and even build new facilities." Iraq was also working up to March 2003 to construct new facilities for the large-scale production of dual-use chemicals.

18. "the CIA has found 41 different material breaches where Saddam did have a weapons of mass destruction program" - former Justice Dept prosecutor John Loftus

19. "we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD" - David Kay, who also told the Associated Press that satellites showed "a lot of traffic" from Iraq to Syria

20. a Syrian journalist who defected to Paris in January has named three sites in Syria where Iraqi WMDs are buried, based on contacts of his in Syrian Intelligence. Israeli intelligence has confirmed his account

21. An Iraqi scientist told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria just before the war, according to the New York Times

22. Jordan recently seized 20 tons of chemicals trucked in by confessed al Qaeda members who brought the stuff in from Syria. The chemicals included VX, Sarin and 70 others

23. Following reports that Syria was secretly transporting WMD material to Sudan, Sudanese President Omar Bashir responded, ordering that Syria remove its Scud C and Scud D medium-range ballistic missiles as well as components for chemical weapons stored in warehouses in Khartoum. A U.S. official confirmed the Syrian missile shipments to Sudan but said the U.S. intelligence community has not determined that WMD systems were included

Terrorist ties

Highlights of ties to Al Qaida and terrorist activities known thus far:

1. papers found in Iraqi intelligence headquarters documented the beginnings of Saddam's relationship with al-Qaida. Iraq offered to pay all travel and hotel expenses for a top aide to Osama bin Laden visited Iraq in 1998, bearing a message from bin Laden. The aide stayed in Iraq for a week, after which Iraq intelligence officers sent a message back to bin Laden concerning "the future of our relationship."

2. According to Czech intelligence, 9/11 suspect Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague

3. In his address to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell named Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's presence in Iraq as evidence of a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network." Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war began and is currently leading the terrorists efforts against coalition forces there.

4. in December 2003, US forces operating in the Sunni Triangle discovered an Iraqi weapons cache accompanied by Al Qaida literature and videotapes, according to CNN

5. in January 2004, a senior Al Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured, as was Husam al Yemeni, who is also a terrorist with ties to Al Qaida

6. Abu Nidal was a known terrorist who was harbored by Saddam Hussein and was responsible for the deaths of several American citizens. Iraq's coalition government claims it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta was trained by Nidal in Baghdad, in the summer of 2001.

7. The Defense Department has a memo detailing over 50 contacts between senior officials in Iraq and Osama bin Laden's followers going back to the 1980s

8. There are U.S. satellite photos confirming the existence of a Boeing 707 fuselage in Salam Pak, Iraq, that was used as a hijacking classroom.

9. In February 2004, U.S. troops arrested seven militants believed linked to Al Qaeda in the Iraqi city of Baqouba.

10. Ramzi Yousef, an Iraqi, was the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He arrived in America on an Iraqi passport.

11. Abu Abbas, a known terrorist involved in a hijacking that resulted in the murder of an American, was found in Baghdad on April 14, 2003.

12. September 11 hijackers Nawaz al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Midhar met Iraqi VIP airport greeter Ahmad Hikmat Shakir in Malaysia, on January 5, 2000, where he is said to have escorted them to a 9/11 planning summit with other al Qaida members.

13. Khala Khadar al-Salahat was a top deputy to Abu Nidal and also a resident of Baghdad before he surrendered to US Marines in April 2003.

14. Iraqi diplomat Hisham al Hussein was in contact with leaders of Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group allied with Al Qaida and responsible for the deaths of at least three US citizens, including U.S. soldier Mark Wayne Jackson.

15. Uday Hussein's newspaper, Babylon Daily, published a "List of honor" that included the following passage: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan." That document was discovered by Carter-appointed US federal appeals judge Gilbert S. Merritt.

16. Iraqi ambassador Farouk Hijazi admitted to meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994.

17. An Iraqi intelligence memo dated February 19, 1998, said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him."

18. U.S. District Court judge Harold Baer found Iraq partially responsible for the 9/11 attacks, a ruling that was upheld by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals last October

John Kerry on WMDs

July 29, 2004:

Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so.

Jan. 23. 2003:

We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. [W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ...

Oct. 9, 2002:

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I b elieve that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security

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Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try? ... According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons ... Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents...

Oct. 9, 1998:

We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S.Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.

More...

American Amnesia talks with Ambassador Joseph Wilson

Wilson:

No WMDs have been found, there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program.

Tell that to the Polish troops who found munitions containing cyclosarin or the two U.S. soldiers who were treated for exposure to sarin after finding a 155-mm shell filled with the nerve agent. Tell that to Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi scientist who unearthed nuclear weapons components in his backyard.

CNN - Retired general pushes for more U.S. spies

Franks, who retired last summer four months after the United States invaded Iraq, reportedly expresses his shock at not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and disappointment that more foreign troops were not a part of the war effort.

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Franks, 59, said many Middle Eastern leaders, including Jordan's King Abdullah and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, told him that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had, and planned to use, weapons of mass destruction.

Franks states that in January 2003, Mubarak told him, "Saddam has WMD-biologicals, actually, and he will use them on your troops." He also accuses former White House counterterrorism director Richard Clarke of failing to provide him with "a single page of actionable intelligence" and of engaging in "mostly wishful thinking."

CNN - GOP releases Kerry video

Caption:

Members of the Republican response team show a video they say shows Sen. John Kerry's changing position on Iraq.

National Review - Boogie to Baghdad / What the 9/11 Commission says about Iraq and al Qaeda, by Byron York

The report says bin Laden appears to have reached out to Saddam Hussein:

There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response. According to one report, Saddam Hussein's efforts at this time to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other Middle Eastern regimes led him to stay clear of Bin Ladin.

Since Saddam wasn't interested, the report says, nothing came of the contacts. But by the next year, Saddam, struggling under increasing pressure from the United States, appeared to have changed his mind, and there were more talks:

In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative. In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis. In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December.

The meetings went on, the report says, until Iraq offered to formalize its relationship with al Qaeda:

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States.

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National-security adviser Sandy Berger suggested that the U.S. send just one U-2 flight, but the report says Clarke worried that even then, Pakistan's intelligence service would warn bin Laden that the U.S. was preparing for a bombing campaign. "Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad," Clarke wrote in a February 11, 1999 e-mail to Berger. The report says that another National Security Council staffer also warned that "Saddam Hussein wanted bin Laden in Baghdad."

Weekly Standard - Only Connect, by Stephen F. Hayes

the commission's final report presents a much more complicated picture. It cites repeated "friendly contacts" and details numerous high-level meetings between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda terrorists. It demolishes the claims of former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke that there was "no evidence" of Iraqi support for al Qaeda--in part by publishing excerpts of internal White House emails in which Clarke himself directly makes an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. The final report also amends the staff statement in two important ways, finding only no "collaborative operational relationship" and specifying that these contacts did not indicate "that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."

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But the report contains several gaping holes with respect to the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. Its overview of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center makes no mention of Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who has admitted mixing the chemicals for that attack. And in seeking to rule out any Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks, the panel allowed its conclusions to race ahead of the available evidence by relegating the intriguing story of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi present at a key 9/11 planning meeting, to a single, dismissive footnote.

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OTHER PARTS of the report and the public statements of commissioners do, however, broaden the public understanding of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. Taken together, they render laughable the arguments of those who still maintain there was "no connection."

Of particular interest are assessments of the Clinton administration and former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, whose credibility is reaching Joe Wilson lows. It was Clarke who famously declared on March 21, 2004: "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda. Ever."

The report notes that the Clinton Justice Department included the Iraq-al Qaeda connection in its spring 1998 sealed indictment of Osama bin Laden. That indictment came before the al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa--after which numerous Clinton officials cited an Iraqi connection to the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, destroyed by the United States in response to those al Qaeda attacks.

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According to the 9/11 Commission report, quoting from an email from Clarke to former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on November 4, 1998:

This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was "probably the direct result of the Iraq-al Qida (sic) agreement". Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the "exact formula used by Iraq."

New Republic - Iraq'd / Case Pretty Much Closed, by Spencer Ackerman

In light of the 9/11 Commission's findings--similar in this respect to what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found earlier this month--the options left available to those who argue for a link are few. They can successfully argue that the Commission reaffirms contacts, conversations and points of mutual interest between Iraq and Al Qaeda throughout the 1990s. (The CIA has done so all along through this debate.) What they can't successfully do is make the jump to say that those contacts, conversations and points of mutual interest had much significance.

CNN - 9/11 panel: Al Qaeda planned to hijack 10 planes

The commission's report says bin Laden "explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to [Saddam] Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan.

"The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda."

A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting bin Laden in 1994.

Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded.

"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the report said.

"Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied" any relationship, the report said.

The panel also dismissed reports that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic on April 9, 2000. "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred."

The report said that Atta was in Virginia on April 4 -- evidenced by video that shows him withdrawing $8,000 from an ATM -- and he was in Florida by April 11 if not before.

The report also found that there was no "convincing evidence that any government financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11" other than the limited support provided by the Taliban when bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan.

CNN - Australia 'had Iraq intel failure'

Australian intelligence relied on thin and ambiguous information to assess Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a report found, but there was no evidence of political pressure "to bolster the case for war."