Faulty Connection (campaign to link Iraq to Al Qaeda)

[Native]

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8353
As calls mount for a full-scale investigation into the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence on Iraq's nonexistent nuclear and chemical weapons program, let's hope that the other causus bellum on which the administration based its war -- the alleged link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein -- also gets the scrutiny it deserves...

A hint of such orchestration came in a June interview between Meet the Press host Tim Russert and former Gen. Wesley Clark, as publicized by the press watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
Clark: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."
Russert: "By who? Who did that?"
Clark: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But -- I'm willing to say it -- but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence."

...CBS News' David Martin reported last September that ''Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks," FAIR pointed out recently. Martin attributed his account to contemporaneous notes by a Pentagon aide that quote Rumsfeld as asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL ." The notes then go on to quote Rumsfeld as urging that the administration's response "go massive... sweep it all up, things related and not."

This was the mindset that Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, brought with them to the administration's war council at Camp David four days later. "Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had been examining military options in Iraq for months but nothing had emerged" before 9/11, wrote The Washington Post's Bill Woodward and Dan Balz in their account of that meeting..."Powell objected," the Post account continues... This was clearly taken as a challenge by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. No sooner had they returned to Washington than they convened a two-day meeting of the Perle-chaired DPB on how the crisis could be used to attack Iraq. The meeting, which the State Department was not even notified of, included a "guest" appearance from Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), on whose behalf Wolfowitz, Perle, Woolsey, and several other DPB members had been lobbying for years. According to the Wall Street Journal, several DPB members agreed that an attack on Iraq was indeed warranted, but that, following Powell's caution, it would be much easier to pull off if a link could be established between 9/11 and Hussein. As a result, Woolsey was quietly dispatched to Europe -- again, without notice to the State Department, or even to the CIA -- to try to uncover evidence of such a link. So hush-hush was the mission that Woolsey himself has never said precisely what he was doing there, and the Pentagon disclaimed any information about it after it became public...

Two-thirds of adult Americans believed that "Saddam Hussein helped the terrorists in the 9/11 attacks," according to a Pew Research Center poll taken just before the House of Representatives voted on the war resolution -- a smashing tribute to the persistence and effectiveness of Wolfowitz, Perle, Woosley & Co., considering the emptiness of the claim.

(MUCH MORE)