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Cheney Stands By Charges of Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links and Mobile Iraqi BW Facilities
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said once again yesterday that there had been a connection between prewar Iraq and al-Qaeda and that the discovery of two mobile trailers in Iraq demonstrated the existence of an Iraqi biological weapons program — claims that have been heavily disputed, at times by senior Bush administration officials (see GSN, Jan. 21). In an interview with National Public Radio, Cheney said there was “overwhelming evidence” of a “connection” between al-Qaeda and the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. “I am very confident that there was an established relationship there,” he said (see GSN, Jan. 15). Cheney’s comments yesterday, however, appear to contradict those recently made by other senior Bush administration officials, according to the Los Angeles Times. For example, Secretary of State Colin Powell said this month that he had “not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence” of connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda (see GSN, Jan. 9). In addition, members of Congress also challenged Cheney’s claim. “There’s nothing I have seen or read that backs [Cheney] up,” said Senator John “Jay” Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Rockefeller also described Cheney’s comments as “perplexing.” Cheney also said yesterday that the discovery last year of mobile trailers in Iraq supported the Bush administration’s prewar claims that Iraq possessed WMD programs (see GSN, Sept. 15, 2003). “We’ve found a couple of semi-trailers at this point which we believe were in fact part of (a WMD) program,” Cheney said. “I would deem that conclusive evidence, if you will, that he did in fact have programs for weapons of mass destruction,” he added. An interim report by chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq David Kay, however, said that “we have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile (biological weapons) production effort” (see GSN, Oct. 3, 2003). In a television interview aired last night, Kay said the first disclosures of the vehicle findings were “premature and embarrassing.” “I wish that news hadn’t come out,” Kay said, calling the release of the information a “fiasco” (Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 23). During his interview, Cheney suggested that weapons of mass destruction could still be discovered in Iraq, according to the Washington Post. “We still don’t know the whole extent of what they did have. It’s going to take some additional considerable period of time in order to look in all the cubbyholes and ammo dumps and all the places in Iraq where you’d expect to find something like that,” he said (Milbank/Pincus, Washington Post, Jan. 23). British Intelligence Officials Continue to Defend Prewar Iraq DossierMeanwhile, British intelligence officials continue to support a September 2002 dossier on prewar Iraqi WMD efforts, according to the London Times (see GSN, Dec. 8, 2003). According to British officials, members of the Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee have said that the dossier was an accurate assessment of the state of Iraq’s WMD programs at the time it was published. They also said that the six-month period between the dossier’s publishing and the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom could have given Iraq the time to hide or destroy WMD-related materials. They also said, however, that British intelligence chiefs were unlikely to participate in future dossiers prepared for public release (Michael Evans, London Times, Jan. 23).
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