IMPEACH THE LIERS!!!!
Cheney Is Adamant on Iraq 'Evidence'
Vice president revives assertions on banned weaponry and links to Al Qaeda that other
administration officials have backed away from.
By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney
revived two controversial assertions about the war in
Iraq on Thursday, declaring there was "overwhelming
evidence" that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with
Al Qaeda and that two trailers discovered after the war
were proof of Iraq's biological weapons programs.
The vice president stood by positions that others in the
Bush administration have largely abandoned in recent
months, as preliminary analysis of the trailers has been
called into question and new evidence — including a
document found with Hussein when he was captured — cast doubt on theories
that Iraq and Al Qaeda collaborated.
Cheney's comments were seen as stoking the controversy over Iraq as the vice
president was embarking on a trip to an economic summit in Switzerland and
meetings with European officials, some of them fierce opponents of the war who
have been dismissive of U.S. claims about the threat posed by Iraq.
Cheney has consistently espoused the most hawkish views among senior
administration officials. His statements Thursday suggest he intends to maintain
that tone as he takes a more high-profile role in President Bush's reelection
campaign.
"There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between Al Qaeda and
the Iraqi government," Cheney said in an interview on National Public Radio. "I
am very confident that there was an established relationship there."
That assertion appeared at odds with the recent words of other senior
administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who said in
an interview this month that he had "not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence" of
connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Danielle Pletka, an analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute,
defended Cheney's comments, saying he referred only to a "relationship" between
Iraq and Al Qaeda.
"Nobody has ever said Saddam directed Al Qaeda in attacks," Pletka said. "But
it is clear that had he decided to do so at any point it would have been easy."
Members of Congress and some in the intelligence community said Thursday that
Cheney's comments could lead the public to believe there was collaboration
between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and that that was not supported by the evidence.
U.S. intelligence officials agree that there was contact between Hussein's agents
and Al Qaeda members as far back as a decade ago and that operatives with ties
to Al Qaeda had at times found safe haven in Iraq. But no intelligence has
surfaced to suggest a deeper relationship, and other information turned up
recently has suggested that significant ties were unlikely.
Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is in custody, has told
American interrogators that Al Qaeda rejected the idea of any working
relationship with Iraq, which was seen by the terrorist network as a corrupt,
secular regime. When Hussein was captured last month, he was found with a
document warning his supporters to be wary of working with foreign fighters.
"There's nothing I have seen or read that backs [Cheney] up," said Sen. John D.
"Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, who called Cheney's remarks Thursday "perplexing."
Cheney also argued that the main thrust of the administration's case for war —
the claim that Iraq was assembling weapons of mass destruction — had been
validated by the discovery of two flatbed trailers outfitted with tanks and other
equipment.
"We've found a couple of semi-trailers at this point which we believe were in fact
part of [a WMD] program," Cheney said. "I would deem that conclusive
evidence, if you will, that he did in fact have programs for weapons of mass
destruction."
That view is at odds with the judgment of the government's lead weapons
inspector, David Kay, who said in an interim report in October that "we have not
yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile [biological weapons]
production effort."
In a BBC interview that aired Thursday night on public television in the United
States, Kay said that is still the case. He said it was "premature and
embarrassing" for the CIA to conclude shortly after the vehicles were discovered
last year that they were weapons labs. "I wish that news hadn't come out," Kay
said, calling the release of the information a "fiasco."
Experts are still in disagreement over the purpose of the vehicles, with some
saying they may have been meant for biological weapons production and others
saying it was more likely they were meant for making hydrogen.
Cheney is considered the administration official who has the most influence with
Bush. His role in assembling the case for war has been controversial.
His numerous trips to CIA headquarters before the war were interpreted by
some critics as an effort to pressure agency analysts to adopt hard-line views. In
his public appearances, he often cast the alleged threat from Iraq in a harsh light,
warning that United Nations inspectors could not be effective and that Iraq had
reconstituted its nuclear program. Kay has since said there was no active nuclear
program.
Since the war, as the administration has sought to deflect charges that it
exaggerated the Iraqi threat, Cheney has appeared reluctant to give ground. On
occasion, this has created public relations problems for the White House.
After Cheney implied in a television interview in September that Iraq was
involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush was forced to acknowledge days later that
the administration "had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved" in Sept.
11.
The White House had no comment Thursday on Cheney's remarks.
Citing Cheney's latest comments, Democrats on Capitol Hill renewed their calls
for an examination of the administration's use of intelligence.
"This is the same problem that existed before the war. Leaders are going beyond
what the intelligence community said," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).
The intelligence committees in the House and Senate are nearing completion of
reports on intelligence failures in Iraq, but Republican leaders have resisted calls
for examinations of claims made by officials in the executive branch.
Cheney insisted the "jury is still out" on whether Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction when the U.S. invaded last year. He said the search for banned arms
should continue there.
"It's going to take some additional, considerable period of time in order to look in
all the cubbyholes and the ammo dumps and all the places in Iraq where you
might expect to find something like that," Cheney said.
Bush has staunchly defended his decision to go to war, but has had to adopt
somewhat strained language to characterize the threat he says was posed.
With no weapons of mass destruction yet discovered, Bush in his State of the
Union address Tuesday said the United States had evidence of
"weapons-of-mass-destruction-related program activities."
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