Guardian claims US blind on Iraq - Al Qaeda connections

From The Guardian

Jumping on the preliminary report from the 9/11 commission, The Guardian is frothing at the mouth like a mad dog in its' attack on President Bush.

The Bush administration's reaction to the report of the bipartisan US commission investigating September 11, which has found no evidence of a substantive relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida, is a classic case of none being so blind as those who will not see. "We stand by what was said publicly," said the White House spokesman, thus endorsing the stream of loose and contradictory claims made by the president and vice-president as they have thrashed around to justify the Iraq war. A year ago George Bush, in his prematurely triumphal aircraft-carrier speech, asserted that "we've removed an ally [Iraq] of al-Qaida". Last September Dick Cheney called Iraq "the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on September 11".

Notice how people keep using their own words to describe "the relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda?

But this same so called newspaper, sang a different tune in 1999, when their beloved Bill Clinton was in office. Thanks to Instapundit.

Saddam link to Bin Laden

By Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday February 6, 1999
The Guardian [...]

The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq.[...]

Ahmed Allawi, a senior member of the opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC), based in London, said he had heard reports of the December meeting which he believed to be accurate. "There is a long history of contacts between Mukhabarat [Iraqi secret service] and Osama bin Laden," he said. Mr Hijazi, formerly director of external operations for Iraqi intelligence, was "the perfect man to send to Afghanistan".

Analysts believe that Mr Hijazi offered Mr bin Laden asylum in Iraq, most likely in return for co-operation in launching attacks on US and Saudi targets. Iraqi agents are believed to have made a similar offer to the Saudi maverick leader in the early 1990s when he was based in Sudan.
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