The Two Colin Powells
Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked at a news conference about a new report by three antiwar scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Although focused on Iraq’s WMD capabilities, the report threw in another finding for good (or political) measure. “There is no new evidence that Iraq actively aided al Qaeda. There is some new evidence that there were no operational links.”
What “new evidence” do the authors cite? A discredited claim made in a newspaper article from six months ago, the absence of reporting about the debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence official, and a “study” by a U.N. monitoring team that hasn’t operated in Iraq for nine months. Hardly compelling. In fact, it’s hardly “evidence” at all.
In the Times story cited by Carnegie, it was reported that “two of the highest-ranking leaders of al Qaeda in American custody have told the CIA in separate interrogations that the terrorist organization did not work jointly with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. . . . In his debriefing, [Abu] Zubaydah [an al Qaeda planner and recruiter] said Mr. bin Laden had vetoed the idea [of an alliance] because he did not want to be beholden to Mr. Hussein, the official said.”
But as THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Stephen Hayes first reported in October, the Times reporter got only half the story. The Times’s source was an “official who has read the Central Intelligence Agency’s classified report on the interrogation.” But that same report contained an important caveat from Zubaydah: “Bin Laden views any entity which hated Americans or was willing to kill them as an ally. . . . Abu Zubaydah explained that [Osama bin Laden’s] personal goal of destroying the U.S. is so strong that to achieve this end he would work with whomever could help him, so long as al Qaeda’s independence was not threatened.”
The CIA report adds that Zubaydah “admitted that it was entirely possible that there were communications or emissaries” of which he would not be aware. Zubaydah also confirmed that bin Laden “approved of contacts and funding” for militant Islamists in northern Iraq widely believed to have had Iraqi intelligence officials in their ranks.
That the Carnegie report cites this Times article as “new evidence” that Iraq and al Qaeda didn’t collaborate speaks volumes about the strength of its research. THE SCRAPBOOK isn’t surprised that reporters fell for the “new evidence,” but we found it odd that Colin Powell was likewise so gullible. Asked about the Carnegie finding, Powell said:
“I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection. But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.”
Huh? That view certainly puts Powell at odds with most other administration officials familiar with intelligence on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Here’s what one senior administration official said last February:
“Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants. . . . When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq. . . . Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein’s controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.
“Zarqawi’s activities are not confined to this small corner of northeast Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day. During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These al Qaeda affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money, and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they’ve now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.
“Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al Qaeda. These denials are simply not credible.”
Who was this official presenting “smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection?” Dick Cheney? Donald Rumsfeld? Paul Wolfowitz? Condoleezza Rice? None of the above. It was Colin Powell in his report to the U.N. Security Council. Was he kidding?
Primarily a Joke
D.C.’s nonbinding “beauty contest” primary will be held on January 13, and the Friday before, Dennis Kucinich was working hard to grab votes. He had at least one success. At a campaign lunch we attended, Karen A. Szulgit from the Stand Up! For Democracy in D.C. Coalition said that she “has a problem.” She arrived as a Sharpton supporter. But Kucinich, she said, “has given us a lot of what we want.” After all, in response to the first question, he had promised to introduce a bill for D.C. statehood when Congress comes back in session, a gold medal pander as these things go.
After citing his “longstanding commitment to urban America,” Kucinich opined that “democracy, like charity, should begin at home.” People laugh a lot about Kucinich, but he showed impressive skill in fending off the hobby horses of various conspiracy theorists in the crowd (“it wouldn’t be appropriate to bring that up in the context of presidential debate”). He then accepted a DVD filled with evidence that Bush is protecting murderers and other unsavory characters from prosecution, and with surprising grace ran out the door to catch a plane.
A woman with a Kucinich sticker affixed between her shoulder blades discoursed to THE SCRAPBOOK on the color of the auras of the nation’s children (“indigo”) and poured herself tea from her own thermos (“Chinese recipe, I never travel without it”). An earnest young man talked to a woman seated nearby about his “photo documentary on inequities in education.” An older man discussed the dirty details of D.C.’s Sisyphean statehood campaign but asked that his name not be used in connection with the Kucinich event because, he confided, “I’m a Republican.”
But the prevailing mood was open and good-humored. Another member of the Stand Up! coalition put her finger on why–Kucinich “obviously sees us as having some kind of power,” she said. “That never happens to us.”
Our Kind of Democrat
Still catching up with our Christmas vacation reading backlog, we came across the New York Sun’s December 29 interview with former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, now president of the New School. He sounded at times very much like a fish out of water. For instance, this take on airport security is not likely to endear him to the other members of University Presidents Local 2865:
“We nationalized security, put another billion dollars out there, bailed out the airline industry, which was already providing lousy service–that’s why they were in trouble–and shut down National Airport. It was a response that indicated that something else was wrong. They take away our knives, they take away sharp objects. They probably should issue knives to everybody. It probably increases our chance that we’re going to be able to put down somebody who tries to take a plane with a box cutter.”
Asked by the Sun’s Eric Wolff, “Do the Democrats have a chance?” he began with the party line: “Yes.” But it was all downhill (uphill?) from there: “Twenty percent of the American people will vote for anybody but Bush. I think that any Democrat who doesn’t get 200 electoral votes has done a terrible job. Do I think Bush has a very strong hand? Yes. He’s the incumbent, he’s been prodigious in his fundraising ability, which matters; he’s got great political and personal skills; people like him; women like him. People need to like you. Howard Dean has a plus and minus there. He photographs very well, his still photographs are very good, and that’s not small. He’s got a big neck; he looks like a wrestler. He and Bush both have the same sort of physiognomy.”
And the minus? “He’s not likable.” Ouch.
