How Bad Is the Senate Intelligence Report? (1 Viewer)

[Trajan Octavian Titus]

How Bad Is the Senate
Intelligence Report?
Very bad.
by Stephen F. Hayes
09/25/2006, Volume 012, Issue 02


According to a report released September 8 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Saddam Hussein "was resistant to cooperating with al Qaeda or any other Islamist groups." It's an odd claim. Saddam Hussein's regime has a long and well-documented history of cooperating with Islamists, including al Qaeda and its affiliates.

As early as 1982, the Iraqi regime was openly supporting, training, and funding the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization opposed to the secular regime of Hafez Assad. For years, Saddam Hussein cultivated warm relations with Hassan al-Turabi, the Islamist who was the de facto leader of the Sudanese terrorist state, and a man Bill Clinton described as "a buddy of [Osama] bin Laden's."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/710goolj.asp

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[Iriemon]

Only odd if you believed the neocon BS all along.

Back to Stephen Hayes eh? Heh heh.

 

[Trajan Octavian Titus]

Only odd if you believed the neocon BS all along.

Back to Stephen Hayes eh? Heh heh.

Read the dissenting opinions of the Phase 2 Report which begins on page 148 of this PDF:

http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf

 

[RightinNYC]

For the majority who won't read the whole thing, some noteworthy bits, and interesting insight into the methodology of the report:

On what basis do the authors (of the report) claim that Saddam Hussein was "resistant" to cooperation with Islamists? The finding is sourced to "postwar detainee debriefs--including debriefs of Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz." Well then, that settles it.

But why take Saddam's word for it? This is, after all, the same man who claims that he is the president of Iraq. Even assuming the man isn't a pathological liar, isn't it the case that detainees interrogated by a government fighting a global war on terror might have an incentive to understate their complicity in global terror?

This appears to have occurred to the report's authors. "The Committee believes that the results of detainee debriefs largely comport with documentary evidence, but the Committee cannot definitively judge the accuracy of statements made by individuals in custody and cannot, in every case, confirm that detainee statements are truthful and accurate."(Perhaps the most important bit of information to note)

In fact, it's not clear that the results of the detainee debriefs do, in fact, largely comport with the documentary evidence. What is clear is that where there was a conflict, the committee almost always chose to disregard the documentary evidence in favor of the debriefings, sometimes to comical effect. According to the report, Saddam Hussein was asked whether he might cooperate with al Qaeda because "the enemy of the enemy is my friend." The report dutifully--and uncritically--offers his response. "Saddam answered that the United States was not Iraq's enemy. He claimed that Iraq only opposed U.S. policies." (huh?)

Really? That's hard to reconcile with these instructions from Saddam Hussein in a 1993 address. "Attack them, our beloved people," Saddam ordered in a speech broadcast on Iraqi television. "You are the glory of our nation. Attack them." Or this editorial: "American and British interests, embassies, and naval ships in the Arab region should be the targets of military operations and commando attacks by Arab political forces," argued Uday Hussein's newspaper Babel on November 15, 1997.


There is much to quarrel with in the report. But it is worth spending a moment to consider the vast amount of information that was left out of the committee's treatment of Iraq's links to al Qaeda. A few examples:

There is no mention in the report of Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who admitted mixing the chemicals for the bomb used in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, cited in the July 2004 Senate report as an al Qaeda operation. The mastermind of that attack, Ramzi Yousef, is the nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Two weeks after the bombing, according a July 2004 report issued by the same Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Yasin fled to Iraq with Iraqi assistance. ABC News reported in 1994 that a Baghdad neighbor of Yasin's told them that he travels freely and "works for the government."

There is no mention of documents recovered in postwar Iraq confirming that the Iraqi regime provided Yasin with housing and funding after his return to Iraq until the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003. Vice President Dick Cheney has discussed these documents in television and radio interviews....

Lots more interesting stuff, check it out and make up your own minds.