A Tangled Web

THE FOLLY OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION.



When the 9/11 Commission came out with the view that there had been no links between Saddam and Al Qu'eda, it was seized on by the leftist media. led by the BBC. The curious thing is, as Andrew McCarthy points out in National Review, the Commission has ignored evidence given to it!



For example, CIA Director George Tenet on October 7, 2002, wrote a letter to Congress, which asserted:



"Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank. We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action."



Not convinced? Try this. It is the little-discussed original indictment of bin Laden, obtained by the Justice Department in spring 1998 — several weeks before the embassy bombings and at a time when the government thought it would be prudent to have charges filed in the event an opportunity arose overseas to apprehend bin Laden. Paragraph 4 of that very short indictment reads:



"Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."



None of this evidence has been retracted - instead it has been ignored by those who follow their own anti-Bush agenda.



Melanie Phillips also exposed the media duplicity on this here.



Here's the intro..read the rest yourself.



"The Big Lie about the 9/11 commission’s staff report, and the prominent role played in this lie by the New York Times, is steadily being taken apart. Last night on BBC Radio Four’s The World Tonight , commissioner John Lehman fingered the NYT and other papers for misreporting the findings. These, he said, showed in fact ‘real evidence of contact and co-operation between Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service and al Qaeda’. What there was no evidence of was Saddam’s involvement with al Qaeda in its attacks on the US. A very different matter.



Meanwhile, in an interview Vice-President Dick Cheney tore into the NYT coverage as ‘outrageous’, particularly for its utterly mendacious headline: ‘Panel finds no Qaeda-Iraq tie’. But Cheney went further and repeated some of the evidence supporting the link which is so wickedly being totally ignored by the media."