Word: linked
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...9/11 congressional inquiry in the most comprehensive inquiry to date into the attacks makes no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, except for a passing reference in the testimony of CIA director George Tenet to the possibility that hijacker Mohammed Atta may or may not have met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent. Czech authorities had originally alerted the U.S. to such a possibility, but later withdrew the claim, which was always doubted by FBI officials who had information placing Atta in the U.S. on each of the days either side of the purported Prague encounter. Claims...
...that that Iraqi involvement has become part of the prevailing mythology of 9/11 for so many Americans? The answer may lie in part in a conscious campaign by early advocates of the Iraq invasion within the Bush Administration to link Saddam and al-Qaeda. Indeed, some 70 percent of Americans tell pollsters they believe the Administration implied an Iraq-al-Qaeda link. That campaign began within hours of the 9/11 attacks. Former NATO commander-in-chief General Wesley Clark told NBC last month that people in and around the White House had made a concerted push to link 9/11...
...More important than the fate of Mylroie's scholarship now that Saddam is gone but al-Qaeda continues to haunt us is the question of why the Administration placed such a strong emphasis on the purported Iraq-al-Qaeda link when it appears to have been at odds with the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq recently released by the administration to back up its case on the "yellowcake" uranium allegations says the intelligence services did not believe it was likely that Saddam would share his weapons of mass destruction with al-Qaeda, except...
...Besides the possibility of the Prague encounter, the claim of an Iraq-bin Laden link rest on three pillars: The fact that "bin Laden associate" Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who runs the Islamist terror network suspected of killing a U.S. diplomat in Jordan, had taken shelter in Baghdad after being wounded in Afghanistan; The fact that the Kurdish Islamist group attacking mainstream pro-U.S. Kurdish groups in northeastern Iraq had received cash and training from al-Qaeda; and Iraqi records show that an Iraqi emissary had held a meeting or meetings with bin Laden representatives in Afghanistan...
...Wolfowitz warned, the evidence is murky: Zarqawi had been in Baghdad, but his relationship with bin Laden is in dispute - European interrogations of some of his subordinates suggest he was running a rival group. Ansar al-Islam certainly had links to al-Qaeda, but there is little to suggest that the group, which operated in the northeast of the country where the allied no-fly zone prevented Saddam from exercising control, had any links with Baghdad. And the reports of the meetings between Iraq and al-Qaeda also suggest that bin Laden had declined to pursue a relationship with...