I've read over their complete statement on the subject and am in the process of preparing a full point-by-point critique of it, but just based on what I've read so far, this reads like a media report rather than a serious piece of analysis.
There are so many omissions of rather important points of data, misleading statements, or claims that are demonstrably false, notably the claim that the al-Qaeda role in the Riyadh National Guard and Khobar Towers bombings was ambiguous or that there is uncertainty as to whether or not al-Qaeda was involved in either the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the proto-9/11 Oplan Bojinka. The frequent references to bin Laden's public statements on subjects like the Riyadh bombing as providing insight into whether or not he actually ordered the attack is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the commission. The claim that the public signatories of bin Laden's declaration of war did more for show than anything else is likewise more than enough to make anyone who has carried out a serious study of the Egyptian or Pakistani Islamists grit their teeth.
I know that opponents of the war in Iraq are likely to seize upon the commission's statements as proof that the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda didn't exist - that mere fact is likely enough to grant these statements ex cathedra status within most liberal activist circles.
However, there are so many other factual problems with the commission statement in areas far less controversial than Iraqi collaboration with al-Qaeda that I can't make an objective evaluation of how they reached that conclusion. In light of their refusal to acknowledge what is generally accepted as fact within counter-terrorism circles on so many other points, I just have to throw up my hands in exasperation on this one.
Bosnia does not even get a mention in the document, nor does the role of the US in facilitating the movement of what we later learned to be al-Qaeda fighters into Bosnia where they formed the Kateebat al-Mujahideen battalion of the Bosnian Third Army to fight the Serbs and their puppet paramilitaries. That needs to be studied in detail if we really want to look at US intelligence failures with respect to al-Qaeda leading up to 9/11 (so does the US attack on the al-Shifa plant in 1998), but apparently nobody on Capitol Hill is very interested in doing that these days.
Now I don't expect this to convince anyone who is inclined to regard the commission's report as gospel (that's what the critique is for), but that's pretty much my opinion upon reading the report. The Washington Post today is claiming that two officials, one FBI and the other CIA, are claiming that the commission's report is pretty much the way they believe the world is and I have to say that if that's true, it's extremely disturbing - though it does explain a great deal as to how the US could be so wrong on the issue of Iraqi WMDs. Or why Doug Feith's complete analysis encountered so much resistance at the CIA, when he basically said up-front what any reasonable observer should have in my mind concluded with respect to the various parties that back al-Qaeda's war against the US.
This is something we're going to need to face up to if we want to win the war on terrorism no matter which party is in power, but unfortunately it doesn't look like it's going to happen this time around.
This report is nothing but a hatchet job by political hacks. If they reported the sky was blue I'd go outside to check.
The commission members have done this country a great DISservice.
Your preliminary analysis of the 9-11 Commission Reports shows the gap that is present between Americans who closely follow Islamist movements (e.g. al Qaeda) and secular Arab movements (e.g. Ba'athism), and Americans who are intelligent, politically active, and get their news in these areas from mainstream newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV. For whatever set of reasons, the gap in perceptions is wide, and getting wider.
Today, I've already had two conversations prompted by opening remarks like, "well, I'd pretty much figured that the AQ/Iraq connections were fables being told by Bushies. Now the 9-11 Commission has come out and shown that to be the case."
Two Realities, with at least one (the Other Guy's!) not always subject to modification by unfettered consideration of facts and logical inference, as available in the open-source literature. Not a healthy development.
AMac:
The more information there is the greater the likelihood of completely discrete and disparate information spaces emerging. More to come.
I've only had time to check the front page (LA Times) this morning, but the thing that left my jaw hanging was the conclusion (as reported in the Times) that Atta could not have met with the Iraqi agent in Prague because his cell phone was in Florida at the time. (Never mind that it would have been useless in Prague, or that Bin Laden supposedly fooled US intelligence by giving his phone to someone else near Tora Bora.)
I'm not trying to start an argument, I 'd just like some information. In his post on the report, Kevin Drum argues that whatever connections there were between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, they were small relative to other Middle East nations. To quote him:
"At a guess, I'd say that the following countries all had (and have) far greater contact with al-Qaeda than Iraq did:
Afghanistan
Sudan
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Egypt
Pakistan
And several others"
I'd tend to agree with that, but I know some people here know more about it than I do, so if anyone has a comment on the Iraq-Al Qaeda connections compared to other countries, I'd be interested to hear it. (I'm not using this as a reason to argue against the war. I just think it's an interesting point that's been overlooked.)
curt wrote:
I've only had time to check the front page (LA Times) this morning, but the thing that left my jaw hanging was the conclusion (as reported in the Times) that Atta could not have met with the Iraqi agent in Prague because his cell phone was in Florida at the time. (Never mind that it would have been useless in Prague, or that Bin Laden supposedly fooled US intelligence by giving his phone to someone else near Tora Bora.)
Posted by: Curt on June 17, 2004 06:04 PM
the report states that there is videotape of atta withdrawing money from an ATM during the time he was supposed to be in prague.
just FTR.
I think a more appropriate way to look at is that Al Queda and Islamic fundamentalists have connections with elements in virtually every country in the world. By far the most connections and support comes from elements in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Egypt, but no country, including the US and Iraq come up empty.
(Just do a search on winds of change or google with the "country name" and "al queda" and peruse the hits.)
The question is not whether Al Queda and Iraq had signed a treaty document pronounced to the world, but A) were there elements within Iraq that were actively cooperating with Islamic terorrists and B) was the official government helping us in dealing with A or not.
As examples:
In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and Yemen - the official governments have been at least attempting to help us despite the fact that significant elements within each government and society support the Islamists.
The official governments of Syria and Iran for the most part have been unhelpful, but have coooperated in limited ways, but not enough for them not to be central targets of diplomatic and political attacks at the least.
the official governments of Iraq, North Korea and Byelorussia have been completely antagonistic in every way and therefore deserve the most bellicose treatment.
We can debate till the end of time about whether or not Iraq's intransigence and the significance of its connections to various terrorists were sufficiently dangerous to justify offensive military action, but at least we should look at it within the proper context and framework.
e.g., Just becuase NK and Iran are most likely greater threats doesn't mean we shouldn't have dealt harshly with the Iraqi threat.
DSmith:
If it was just Iraq/al-Qaeda, that would be one thing, but this document has holes in it big enough for Godzilla to walk through, like the claim that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wasn't an al-Qaeda member at the time of Oplan Bojinka even though he's a founding member of the organization, had served as bin Laden's bodyguard as far back as 1991, and was being funded at the time by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law.
AMac:
The Iraq/al-Qaeda claim is getting the most attention because of the political implications of the document, though some right-wingers are attempting to argue that the media is making an inference based on what the commission found in this regard. This is a case where the media is entirely correct in their inferences, but that their source material is flawed.
Curt:
The claims concerning the alleged Atta meeting in Prague are the least of my concerns on this one. The problem is that when they're hitting the goddamned bong so much on all the other data, how exactly is one supposed to make an objective evaluation of the controversial claims that are being made?
Devin McCullen:
Drum has been hitting the Kool Aid again if he seriously believes that Egypt has ever provided any serious aid to al-Qaeda. That's just as, if not more crazy, than anything that Laurie Mylroie has ever claimed. As for the other countries, I hope to get to that in my critique.
Anna:
"the report states that there is videotape of atta withdrawing money from an ATM during the time he was supposed to be in prague."
No, the report states (as has been publicized before) that he withdrew $8000 on April 4, and that there are no other sightings of him in the US until April 11. The Czechs say the meeting happened on April 9.
Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution of Sheik Rahman, spotted the same thing in NRO, and states it much better than I could:
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406170840.asp
Dan -- I realize this isn't the biggest issue in the report, but it seems very telling to me as to how they deal with various kinds of evidence.
Can they really be this stupid?
Stephen Hayes came up with an interesting theory: if al-Qa'eda is as entrenched with ME governments as he and those like him believe, it compels us to make Baghdad the first stop on a long list of Islamic capitals.
I'm of course, junior here compared to Dan, but I'm baffled by what he's saying. I'm not aware that an overall "report" has been issued.
Cite, URL, anyone? Am I in a parallel universe?
Dan's cite is of "9/11 commission staff statement No. 15."
I've followed these reports very closely, and posted on them at length.
More to follow.
Devin: Interesting list. But if one were to ask me to place that in relevence to the Iraq campaign, I would say that among all those listed, Iraq was the country with al Qaeda contacts that had been the most demonstrably hostile to the US and, given contemporary WMD analysis, posed the greatest potential threat resulting from an al Qaeda connection.
That said, however, I thought the report was about 9/11 and American systemic failures that contributed to allowing it to occur. As such, what does conjecture about Iraq's connection after the attack have to do with intelligence failures before the attack?
Here, of course, is the site to read the reports and statements, rather than MSNBC or anywhere else.
Gary:
Statement #15 (not the actual report, I misspoke in that regard, though press reports have also characterized it as such, so I'm hardly alone in this regard) is the particular object of my animus, as most of the other stuff is pretty much on the ball. And the website version of Statement #15, of course, is the same as that provided by the MSNBC link sourced at the top of the blog.
When I clicked Gary's link, then the link to staff statement 15, I got a "page not found" message.
I assume, as titled, the MSNBC link provides "text as submitted" of staff statement 15.
CBK
[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was] a founding member of the organization, had served as bin Laden's bodyguard as far back as 1991, and was being funded at the time by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law
Who says this - Gunaratna? If so, what's his source? Is there independent corroboration?
role of the US in facilitating the movement of what we later learned to be al-Qaeda fighters into Bosnia ... needs to be studied in detail
Have you ever read Labeviere's Dollars for Terror? It argues, circa 1999, that the USA was still clandestinely supporting Islamists throughout Eurasia, as a way to destabilize strategic rivals such as Russia, China, and even the EU. The argument is rather feeble in places, but the details on the Swiss connection (Al Taqwa, Ahmed Huber) are interesting.
mitch:
Gunaratna has a full biography of KSM in his updated edition of Inside Al-Qaeda, though he gave the man a passing mention in his original version. I've checked it out through press reports and other means, and all I'll say is that it's accurate if one believes the conventional wisdom concerning who KSM is that it's the straight dope.
Based on what I've been able to learn so far, I think it's fair to say that circa the Dayton Peace Agreement, we still didn't understand that a lot of the Bosnian Afghan Arabs were what we today know as al-Qaeda so we can claim ignorance on that one. Claims about al-Qaeda operating in Kosovo are accurate, though not to the extent that some Serb apologists would have you believe. Finding out the truth about just how deep the current Albanian separatists are with al-Qaeda has become politically problematic both because of the Milosevic trial as well as recent events involving the former Macedonian interior minister.
I haven't read the report. At 850 some pages, I am in no particular hurry to. However, in the news reporting I have seen, there are no mentions of what the Commission has to say about the Vigilant Guardian exercise, why the President remained on the ground in Florida as long as he did, why Cheney is cited as directing operations out of Washington when it has already been established that Richard Clarke was doing so, why the government lacked any advanced knowledge when several countries had provided intel, etc.
While this report seems to direct accountability to senior administration officials, it is altogether more likely that great pains have been taken in the presentation of the facts not to harshly contradict anything that Scott McClelland may utter on any given day.
We are not being given the full story. Private investigators From The Wilderness, Cooperative Research, and a host of others have pinned down facts more conclusively and with greater speed and utility than this bunch. Perhaps in the warped reality of Washington D.C., preserving political capital takes precedent over providing comprehensive facts in a document that should have been a valuable historical document. Instead, it is refrigerated myth.
A refrigerated myth? Is that like a frozen myth? Or more like a chilled myth?
OK, seriously, I expect you may get a frosty reception (har har) from some other commenters here. But I think that there is some truth in what you say, obelus.
I probably shouldn't post this at all, as I don't have the time or energy to go into detail just now. But I think the US gov't did know about the planned hijackings. And in fact, I think Khalid Sheikh Mohammed deliberately allowed hijacking warnings to reach American ears. It fits the M.O. I've seen with another of his operations.
The thing is this - the Bush administration thought they had it under control. The administration thought they could finesse it. No scrambled F-15s and F-16s, no newspaper headlines, no fuss. But the KSM had a few aces up his sleeve, and they beat us.
Bush tired to stay on script and minimize the fuss - it was an accident - but as things got worse and worse that pretense faded away. I beleive this scenario, properly filled out, explains much of Bush's strange behavior that day. There is much much more about 9/11 that hasn't been revealed yet. Obelus, you and Dan are both right: the commission passed the buck.
And you've gotta be cautious when you hear the word "evidence" come out of someone's mouth in Washington. In the netherworld of the beltway, the word "evidence" means "proof."
CBK -- here's the link:
Statement 15 was like that too for me, so just change the 6 in the above URL to a 5 and hit return.