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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (51431)	10/4/2004 10:56:57 PM
From: SiouxPal	Respond to of 81568

From Sylvestor80 on Scott's thread.... JUST IN! RUMSFELD: No evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq link!! msnbc.msn.com Rumsfeld: No evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq link Updated: 7:43 p.m. ET Oct. 4, 2004 WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday that he knew of no “strong, hard evidence” linking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaida, despite describing extensive contacts between the two before the invasion of Iraq. During a question-and-answer session before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Rumsfeld was asked to explain the connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, which is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. “I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over a period of a year in the most amazing way. Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was,” Rumsfeld said. “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two. “I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who’s connected to al-Qaida who was in and out of Iraq. And it is the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship and why he might not have had a relationship. It may have been something that was not representative of a hard linkage.” U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and toppled Saddam and his government in a war whose main justification offered by the United States was the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been discovered. But the relationship between Saddam’s government and al-Qaida also figured in the U.S. case for war. The bipartisan commission that studied the 2001 attacks concluded in July that there was no evidence of a “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaida or an Iraqi role in attacking the United States. Rumsfeld was also asked Monday what was the “No. 1 reason for the war.” Rumsfeld said President Bush made the judgment that Saddam “ran a vicious regime that had used weapons of mass destruction on its own people, as well as its neighbors, and that it was important to set that right by removing that regime before they, in fact, did gather weapons of mass destruction, either themselves or transferring them to terrorist networks.” Before the war, U.S. officials spoke of Iraq’s already possessing weapons of mass destruction, not a potential for gathering them. “It turns out that we have not found weapons of mass destruction,” Rumsfeld said. “And why the intelligence proved wrong, I’m not in a position to say. I simply don’t know.” Rumsfeld added. And from old Sioux bushsloganator.com