In this week's screed against the Bush administration, Molly Ivins repeats the claim she made in last week's screed against the Bush administration:
there were no ties between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. But there they come again, with some leaked list of questionable intelligence trying to prove what isn't true.Dismissing, apparently, the recent Weekly Standard reports, on the grounds that ... well, she'd rather not believe them.
But evidence for a link between Saddam and Osama seems to have been available to many people outside of the Bush administration:
The Guardian, February 6, 1999
Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials.The Guardian October 19, 2000
Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorist operations and a respected expert on Middle Eastern terrorism, said the timing, location and method of the attack [on the USS Cole] pointed to Bin Laden's terrorist network, al-Qaeda. ..."The Iraqis have wanted to be able to carry out terrorism for some time now," Mr Cannistraro said. "Their military people have had liaison with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and could well have supplied the training."Recall that Bill Clinton was President during 1999 and 2000.He said the theory was still speculative but was consistent with the series of recent contacts between Baghdad and the Bin Laden organisation.
Furthermore, James Woolsey, CIA director under Clinton, has been quoted many times alleging an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection. For example, in the Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2003 on the arrest of Saddamite intelligence kingpin Farouk Hijazi:
Former CIA Director James Woolsey said Hijazi's capture was "the biggest catch so far" for U.S. forces and that Hijazi is a key link between Saddam and terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida.Then there is the Toronto Star April 28, 2003"This man was involved, we know, with a number of contacts with al-Qaida," Woolsey told CNN.
Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization and Saddam Hussein's regime shared direct contact as early as 1998, according to top-secret Iraqi intelligence documents obtained by the Star.Molly Ivins, on the other hand, is willing to say with unassailable certainty that there were no ties between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. None. Zero. No wiggle room for the possibility that there were some ties that she hasn't heard about. And no facts to back up her assertions!The documents, discovered yesterday in the bombed-out headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's most feared intelligence service, amount to the first hard evidence of a link long suspected by the United States but dismissed as fiction by many Western leaders.
Which is another reason why Molly Ivins' column belongs not on the editorial page, but on the comics page with Zippy the Pinhead and other works of humorous fiction.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at November 23, 2003 03:40 PMAnd of course she also claims there were no WMDs, and no nuclear program, directly ignoring the Kay report.
She's beyond redemption. She's an obdurate addle-pated pedant.
I once saw Molly on C-SPAN declare she wasn't a liberal. She stated this while seated next to Al Franken and acting as his personal minion. Go figure.
Posted by: Kent Rockman on November 23, 2003 06:59 PMIt's OK to refer to Osama bin Laden simply as "Osama," or to Saddam Hussein as "Saddam," but please don't refer to Molly Ivins by her first name alone. It's an insult to my pit bull.
Posted by: Xrlq on November 24, 2003 12:06 AMWhat's a tie and what's a link (beside items of men's formal attire)? To prove a link or a tie between Hussein and bin Laden (or Iraq and al Qaeda) to me I'd want to see evidence that al Qaeda either did something primarily because Hussein wanted it to or else did something it would not have been able to do without Hussein's help. So far there's been no convincing evidence of either.
You can read some analysis about the Weekly Standard report here:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/995706.asp?0cv=KB10
By the way, "Bleeding Heart Conservative," "No WMDs found" and "no nuclear program" are paraphrases of statements in the Kay report. Try reading it.
"I'd want to see evidence that al Qaeda either did something primarily because Hussein wanted it to or else did something it would not have been able to do without Hussein's help."
Nice try at moving the goalposts.
BTW -- The Kay report DOES say that Saddam's WMD programs were ongoing, and recently Kay has said they've got a couple of cooperating scientists who were involved in Saddam's anthrax weaponization program.
Posted by: Robert Crawford on November 26, 2003 06:35 PM