WASHINGTON, Oct 5: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday he knew of no "strong, hard evidence" linking Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda, despite describing extensive contacts between the two before the Iraq invasion.
Mr Rumsfeld, during a question-and-answer session before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, was asked to explain the connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.
"I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over a period of a year in the most amazing way. Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was," Rumsfeld said.
"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," Rumsfeld added. "I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who's connected to al Qaeda who was in and out of Iraq. And it is the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship and why he might not have had a relationship. It may have been something that was not representative of a hard linkage."
U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and toppled Saddam and his government in a war whose main justification offered by the United States was the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been discovered. But the relationship between Saddam's government and al Qaeda also figured in the U.S. case for war. A small Pentagon intelligence-analysis office found what it considered evidence of Iraq-al Qaeda ties.
Rumsfeld was one of the Bush administration officials publicly describing this link. On Sept. 26, 2002, Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon of evidence of contacts and cooperation.
'CREDIBLE INFORMATION': "We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical and biological agent training. And when I say contacts, I mean between Iraq and al Qaeda," Rumsfeld said at the time.
"We have what we believe to be credible information that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq, reciprocal non-aggression discussions.
We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire ... weapons of mass destruction capabilities," Rumsfeld added at the time.
The bipartisan 9/11 commission that studied the 2001 attacks concluded this July there was no evidence of a "collaborative operational relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda or an Iraqi role in attacking the United States. During a question-and-answer session at the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Rumsfeld also was asked what was the "number-one reason for the war."
Rumsfeld said President George W. Bush made the judgment that Saddam "ran a vicious regime that had used weapons of mass destruction on its own people, as well as its neighbors, and that it was important to set that right by removing that regime before they, in fact, did gather weapons of mass destruction, either themselves or transferring them to terrorist networks."
Before the war, U.S. officials spoke of Iraq already possessing weapons of mass destruction, not a potential for gathering them. "It turns out that we have not found weapons of mass destruction," Rumsfeld said. "And why the intelligence proved wrong, I'm not in a position to say. I simply don't know. But the world is a lot better off with Saddam Hussein in jail than they were with him in power," Rumsfeld added. -Reuters
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