Similarly, Cheney continues to spread the false claim that Zarqawi’s pre-war presence in Iraq indicated an al-Qaeda connection to Saddam Hussein’s regime. “This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq” before the invasion, Cheney told Limbaugh’s listeners.
But the facts on Zarqawi have long since been established. Before the invasion, the Jordanian terrorist – who had not yet allied himself with al-Qaeda – was operating in Iraq’s northern territory where he was protected by the U.S.-British “no-fly zone” that prevented Hussein from launching military offensives.
Though the Bush administration has made much of Zarqawi slipping into Baghdad in 2002 to receive some medical treatment, U.S. intelligence has concluded that Hussein’s government did not know where Zarqawi was and indeed launched a manhunt aimed at arresting him.
“The [Hussein] regime did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates,” concluded a CIA report dated Oct. 25, 2005.
A September 2006 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee said Zarqawi used an alias while getting medical treatment and evaded capture by the Iraq Intelligence Service, which created a “special committee” to track him down.
Further, the Senate panel concluded that “no postwar information indicates that Iraq intended to use al-Qa’ida or any other terrorist group to strike the United States homeland before or during” the U.S. invasion.
The Senate report found, too, that Hussein’s regime had not developed any operational links to al-Qaeda. As explained by captured Iraqi officials after the invasion, the several contacts between Baghdad and al-Qaeda appeared to have been initiated by al-Qaeda and didn’t lead to any cooperation from Iraq.
Hussein was determined to keep the radical fundamentalist bin Laden at arm’s length, according to these accounts. Senior Iraq Intelligence Service official Faruq Hijazi told American debriefers that he was picked by Hussein to meet with bin Laden in 1995 because Hijazi was secular and unsympathetic to bin Laden’s fundamentalist message.
Hussein also instructed Hijazi “only to listen” and promise nothing. Bin Laden requested permission to open an office in Iraq, to receive Chinese sea mines, and to obtain military training – all of which Hussein rejected, Hijazi said, according to the Senate report.
Other al-Qaeda overtures met similar rebuffs from Hussein who disliked bin Laden, in part, because the Saudi exile had called Hussein an “unbeliever,” according to a senior Iraqi official interviewed after the invasion. Hussein also ordered another al-Qaeda operative, who snuck into Iraq, to be apprehended and expelled.
Even before the U.S.-led invasion – when the Bush administration was hyping Hussein’s alleged ties to al-Qaeda – then-CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that “there are several reported suggestions by al-Qa’ida to Iraq about joint terrorist ventures, but in no case can we establish that Iraq accepted or followed up on these suggestions.”
Despite this evidence and a broad consensus within the U.S. intelligence community, Cheney keeps alive his discredited claims about a pre-war al-Qaeda role under Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Possibly, the Vice President believes that the right-wing media echo chamber is so influential that the sheer repetition of these falsehoods can solidify support for the administration’s position regardless of the facts.
Bush’s Lies
Bush has operated with similar audacity in depicting a “history” of the Iraq War that is mythical, not factual. For instance, just four months after the invasion, Bush altered the pre-war reality in stating that he had no choice but to invade because Saddam Hussein had barred United Nations weapons inspectors.
“We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in,” Bush said at the end of a brief press conference at the White House on July 14, 2003. “After a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.”
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