To hear much of the news reporting yesterday, you'd think a national 9/11 Commission report had blown a giant hole in the Bush administra tion's rationale for toppling Saddam Hussein.
The commission did no such thing.
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But that didn't stop congressional Democrats — led by presumptive presidential nominee John Kerry — from renewing their charges that the administration "misled America" about Saddam Hussein's ties to Osama bin Laden.
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Again, that's not what the report says.
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And even if it did, a Saddam-Osama alliance is not why America opened a front in Iraq as part of the War on Terror.
The staff report, released as part of yes terday's final public hearings, says there was no evident connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.
In fact, the Bush administration has never said there was.
The report also says the commission has "no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."
Again, the administration never said there was.
But the report does say that bin Laden actively sought to work with Saddam, through contacts arranged by the Sudanese government.
Indeed, it says, "a senior Iraqi intelligence office reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting bin Laden in 1994." Further, it says, "contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden returned to Afghanistan."
The report claims that those contacts "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." But that's far from a flat-out "no ties exist."
And, again, the administration has alleged only that Saddam and al Qaeda maintained contacts that were more than casual or inconsequential, none of which is denied in the commission report.
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In fact, as Stephen Hayes writes in The Weekly Standard,
the conventional wisdom in Washington long before George W.
Bush took office was that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin
Laden were partners in terrorism.
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Two Clinton-administration stalwarts, Attorney General
Janet Reno and U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, brought an
indictment against bin Laden and a deputy, Mohammed Atef,
in 1998 — charging that Saddam and Osama "reached an
understanding . . . that on particular projects,
specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would
work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."
Yes, those allegations were eventually dropped from the indictment. These likely means they couldn't have been proven in a court of law under federal rules of evidence — not necessarily that they were baseless to begin with.
(This underscores the dangers of treating global terrorism
in the age of suitcase nukes as a legal — not a military —
matter, as candidate Kerry proposes.)
Meanwhile, back in 1999, ABC News reported that Saddam had
offered bin Laden asylum, citing their "long relationship"
and a December 1998 meeting in Afghanistan between Osama
and Iraqi intelligence chief Faruq Hijazi.
That same year, the Congressional Research Service reported
that if Saddam Hussein "decide[s] to use terrorists to
attack the continental United States, [he] would likely
turn to bin Laden's al Qaeda," which was then recruiting
"Iraqi chemical weapons experts."
Did everyone mislead America?
If, in fact, the nation was misled, the misleading began
long before George W. Bush entered the White House.
But what if substantive Osama-Saddam ties were for real?
Just because the Kean commission hasn't yet found any
evidence does not mean it doesn't exist.
As recently as Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney said that
Saddam "had long-established ties with al Qaeda" — a
statement his spokesman reiterated again yesterday.
Further details can be found in Richard Miniter's vastly
illuminating column on the opposite page.
In other words, the Kean commission — whose blatantly
partisan Bush-bashing has been manifest from the get-go —
is hardly the final word on the subject.
But the commission report does offer a clear rejoinder to
those like Sen. Bob Graham — a possible Kerry vice
presidential pick — who charge that the war in Iraq somehow
constituted a distraction from the War on Terror.
Many seem to have forgotten that the first U.S. military
action after 9/11 was to invade Afghanistan and destroy its
Taliban government, targeting bin Laden strongholds — and
capturing many of his top aides — in the process.
As a result, the report says, "al Qaeda's funding has
decreased significantly. The arrests or deaths of several
important financial facilitators have decreased the amount
of money al Qaeda has raised and increased the costs and
difficulty or raising and moving that money."
Moreover, though the organization remains dangerous, it
today has "a greatly weakened central organization."
Still, President Bush realized — as John Kerry, the
Democrats and the Kean commission clearly do not — that the
war on terrorism is not just about seeking revenge against
the perpetrators of 9/11.
It's about neutralizing radical Islam's fundamental
challenge to Western civilization — fighting to win a war
that was imposed on the West by evil men in the service of
a depraved ideology.
The path to victory is not clear, but the alternative is
one, two, many 9/11's — each more horrific than its
predecessor.
Why is that so hard to understand?
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THE NEW YORK POST OF June 17th, 2004 |
