More Saddam - Al Qaeda ties retracting at The New York Times

William Safire of The New York times does a good job in the opinion pages of retracting the Time's assertion that the 9/11 commission claimed there were "no ties" between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, he blames The Zelikow Report from the commission for the Time's errors. But in their own retraction the Times admits the evidence that Bush was right, was in the public domain the whole time.

"Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . ." This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . ."

All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes . . . no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don't disagree with that" — just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.

The Zelikow report was seized upon by John Kerry because it fuzzed up the distinction between evidence of decade-long dealings between agents of Saddam and bin Laden (which panel members know to be true) and evidence of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attacks (which, as Hamilton said yesterday, modifying his earlier "no credible evidence" judgment, was "not proven one way or the other.")

But the staff had twisted the two strands together to cast doubt on both the Qaeda-Iraq ties and the specific attacks of 9/11: "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Zelikow & Co. dismissed the reports, citing the denials of Qaeda agents and what they decided was "no credible evidence" of cooperation on 9/11.

That paragraph — extending doubt on 9/11 to all previous contacts — put the story on front pages. Here was a release on the official commission's letterhead not merely failing to find Saddam's hand in 9/11, which Bush does not claim. The news was in the apparent contradiction of what the president repeatedly asserted as a powerful reason for war: that Iraq had long been dangerously in cahoots with terrorists.

Of that there is no doubt.

These retractions do not go far enough to repair the damage done by the Times. They knew exactly what they were doing all along and to blame a staff reporter on the 9/11 commission for their failures is discraceful.

Now, let's see if the British and world press will pick up on any of this as fast as they did the original stories. Probably not as it will not suit their anti-American agendas.

UPDATE

Here is a news report by the BBC on 16 June 2004, announcing the 9/11 commission findings that there was no link between Iraq and 9/11 and claiming that this contradicts the Bush Administrations claims.

And yet here is another article by the same BBC on 18 September 2003, with the following startling revelation:

US President George Bush has said there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 11 September attacks.

The comments - among his most explicit so far on the issue - come after a recent opinion poll found that nearly 70% of Americans believed the Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks.

Mr Bush did however repeat his belief that the former Iraqi president had ties to al-Qaeda - the group widely regarded as responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington.

So, the BBC knew the truth all along, just like the Times.
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