The debunking of the US government's pre-war certainties on Iraq gathered pace on Monday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was highly unlikely.
As US President George W. Bush was forced for the second time in days to defend the decision to go to war, a new set of leaks from CIA officials suggested a tendency in the White House to suppress or ignore intelligence findings which did not shore up the case for war.
The interrogation reports of two senior al-Qaeda members, both in US custody, showed that the CIA had reason to doubt the allegations of a connection between Saddam's regime and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Such assertions, promoted vigorously by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were used as an additional justification for war, after the central argument that Iraq's arsenal of banned weapons posed an imminent danger.
The charge of a link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam was contentious even at the time, and a report in the New York Times that the two al-Qaeda members, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, dismissed the idea deepened the impression that Americans had been deliberately misled to support the decision for war.
In recent days that impression has become sufficiently widespread to put officials on the defensive.
On Monday Bush predicted that US inspectors scouring Iraq would soon find evidence of a program of weapons of mass destruction. He also reaffirmed that al-Qaeda maintained a network in Baghdad.
"Intelligence throughout the decade shows they had a weapons program," Bush said. "I am absolutely convinced that with time, we'll find out they did have a weapons program."
That assertion stops well short of Bush's statement during a visit to Poland on May 31 that US troops had already found weapons of mass destruction: two trailers the US said at the time had been used as mobile biological labs.
With the White House fighting for its credibility, the New York Times reported that the two al-Qaeda lieutenants had dismissed the notion of cooperation between Saddam and bin Laden.
Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March last year, told his CIA interrogators that bin Laden had considered and then rejected the idea of working with Saddam because he did not want to be in the Iraqi leader's debt.
His information was supported on the eve of war after Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan on March 1. Mohammed, who had been al-Qaeda's chief of operations, told the CIA the group did not work with Saddam.
While the CIA shared its interrogation record of Zubaydah with other intelligence agencies, it did not release its conclusions to the public.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mindanao in the Philippines at 7:38am today, prompting the US Tsunami Warning System to issue an alert for neighboring countries, including Taiwan. The system issued a purple alert indicating a "tsunami threat." The potential threat zone includes Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Yap and Palau. Philippine authorities were assessing the damage from the quake, with the office of civil defense seeking to verifying initial reports that 15 people had been killed and 129 injured in the region, mostly from falling debris. Arlene Hollero, disaster chief of Maasim town in the Philippines' Sarangani Province,
‘GRAY ZONE’ PRESSURE: Beijing’s activities are intended to create the deceitful impression that China has jurisdiction over the area around Taiwan, the CGA said Taiwan’s rights over its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone must not be violated by any country, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that it will not accept any unprovoked actions. The council issued the remarks in response to the China Coast Guard conducting maritime enforcement drills near eastern Taiwan and claiming to fully exercise China’s maritime administrative law enforcement authority. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) has been closely monitoring the situation and is taking concrete steps to defend the nation’s sovereignty and secure its waters, the council said. China has no sovereign rights over the waters off eastern
RESILIENCE: Taiwan plays a key role in semiconductors, energy, information infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, AIT Director Raymond Greene said Taiwan’s continued investment in deterrence and resilience remains vital, especially in uncrewed systems and other emerging technologies, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said yesterday. Greene made the remarks at the annual National Strategic Summit on Supply Chain Resilience held by the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET), a government-backed think tank. As Taiwan last year became the US’ fourth-largest trading partner and supply chain security is becoming more important, cooperation in emerging technologies continues to deepen between the two countries, he said. The US is committed to accelerating innovation, building key infrastructure, strengthening cooperation
RIGHT DIRECTION: Taiwan’s efforts to prevent forced labor include a proposal to ‘fully prohibit’ employers from withholding workers’ documents, an official said Taiwan is to establish a mechanism to restrict imports of goods linked to forced labor, the Executive Yuan said yesterday, after the US proposed imposing additional tariffs on Taiwanese goods over labor concerns. “The Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Economic Affairs are to establish an interministerial review procedure,” Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “The government is to use the Foreign Trade Act [貿易法] as the legal basis to restrict imports of goods produced with forced labor” and bring its supply chain governance more in line with international standards on human rights, resilience
RSS