The Senate Intelligence Committee Report

Dan Darling's take on it here.

The bottom line

Everything Powell said at the UN regarding Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda (which is pretty much the same as what President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and others said going into the war) appears to have reflected the consensus of the broader intelligence community.

Joe Wilson's claims (along with, I suspect, his reputation within Democratic circles) have more or less gone down in flames, as have claims that intelligence analysts were pressured into making certain conclusions. The claim on p. 328 that "Wali Khan" (i.e. Wali Khan Amin Shah, one of Ramzi Yousef's two lieutenants in the proto-9/11 Oplan Bojinka plot) and Jamal al-Fadhl (whose name is blacked out in the last sentence in that paragraph) identified Abu Hajir al-Iraqi (aka Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim, a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader who was arrested in the wake of the 1998 embassy bombings and later stabbed a NYC prison guard with a comb in his left eye in an attempted prison break in 2000) as the chief liaison between Iraq and al-Qaeda is sure to keep Mylroie enthusiasts around for quite some time at any rate.

In general, this document is a lot better than that Staff Statement No. 15 that was churned out by the 9/11 commission. One other thing to be mentioned, incidentally, is that this report specifically undercuts some of the 9/11 Commission's key findings with respect to Iraq and al-Qaeda. It cites post-1999 contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda, which the 9/11 commission claims to possess no information on. Perhaps someone should hand the commission members a copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee report?

Also, this demolishes 2 of Richard Clarke's key claims with respect to Iraq: that there was no Iraqi involvement in terrorism post-1993, and that there is no evidence whatsoever of Iraqi support for al-Qaeda. Both of these claims, to put it quite simply, can now be shown to be factually untrue.

As I said, no doubt apologies will pending from all those concerned.

Nope. They're already spinning it.

But not very well it would seem.
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