Zarqawi and the U.S. Senate

Much has been made of a recent report by the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence which claims there was no link between Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The Senate report quotes an October 2005 CIA assessment which claims that before the war “the regime did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.” (Reported on page 92 of the Senate report.)

President Bush’s critics have seized upon this as evidence that the President deliberately misled the American people back in 2003 concerning the threat that Iraq posed to the United States.

The problem with this criticism, however, is that it glosses over an inconvenient truth which is spelled out in the same Senate Report: The CIA was singing a different tune in 2002.

Back in September 2002, the CIA reported: “The presence of al-Qa’ida militants on Iraqi soil poses many questions. We are uncertain to what extent Baghdad is actively complicit in this use of its territory by al-Qa’ida operatives for safehaven and transit. Given the pervasive presence of Iraq’s security apparatus , it would be difficult for al-Qa’ida to maintain an active, long-term presence in Iraq without alerting the authorities or without at least their acquiescence.” (Emphasis added.)

This too is reported in the Senate report (on page 89) and clearly indicates that before the war the CIA did think that at the very least Saddam was “turning a blind eye” to Zarqawi.

The significance of this September 2002 CIA assessment is that it exonerates Mr. Bush from the charge that he deliberately misled the American people in 2003 about the relationship between Zarqawi and Hussein. Not surprisingly, the President’s critics have failed to admit this.

Something else which is getting very little play in the national media is the possibility that the Senate committee might very well be mistaken in its assessment that there was no relationship between the two thugs. According to a recent editorial from Investor’s Business Daily, the Senate report “suggests that, at least for the Democrats, Senate intelligence is an oxymoron.”

And on Thursday, the New York Sun reported that Barham Salih, a former Iraqi deputy prime minister, contradicted the Senate report with his assertion that “Some of my friends were murdered by jihadists, by Al Qaeda-affiliated operatives who had been sheltered and assisted by Saddam’s regime.”