The "no Saddam link" story is getting so much play because it fits the broader antiwar, anti-Bush narrative that Iraq was a "distraction" from the broader war on terror. So once again the 9/11 Commission is being used to tarnish the Iraqi effort and damage President Bush's credibility in fighting terror.
Even here, though, the staff report is less a "slam dunk," as the CIA likes to say, than the coverage asserts. We are supposed to believe, for example, that the Commission has found out once and for all that there was no meeting in Prague between the Iraqi agent al-Ani and 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. But the only new evidence the report turns up is that some calls were made from Florida on Atta's cell phone at the same time he was reportedly in Prague. And since that phone would not have worked in Europe anyway, how do we know someone else wasn't using it? The Czechs still believe the Atta meeting took place, and the truth is we still don't know for sure.
There's also the testimony the Commission heard Wednesday from Patrick Fitzgerald. The former Manhattan prosecutor was asked about his 1998 indictment against Osama bin Laden that asserted that al Qaeda had an "understanding" with Iraq that it would not "work against that government" and that "on certain projects, specifically including weapons development," they would "work cooperatively."Mr. Fitzgerald testified that "there was that relationship that went from opposing each other to not opposing each other to possibly working with each other."
Somehow the Commission also omitted any reference to Mr. Tenet's 2002 letter to Congress. "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade," he wrote. And, "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda's 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."
We could go on, but suffice to say that the report hardly disproves any Saddam-al Qaeda link. Mr. Bush was entirely correct when he said yesterday that, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." The extent of those ties is the issue, and it is essential to U.S. security that we keep probing them. In particular, the President should order the release of some of the official Iraqi documents that coalition forces have captured in Iraq and that shed additional light on that relationship.
We thought everyone had learned the hard way on 9/11 that the greatest security danger comes not from taking threats too seriously but from dismissing them too easily. Apparently some people have forgotten that lesson already.
