----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Mensah" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 11:22 AM
Subject: [unioNews] Iraq Intelligence: Here's what Powell said


Thursday, February 5, 2004
<H3>Iraq Intelligence: Here's what Powell said</H3>
Peter S. Canellos The Boston Globe

<B><i>It was on this day a year ago, Feb. 5, 2003, that Colin Powell came
before the United Nations to catalogue Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of
horror.

"My colleagues," said the U.S. Secretary of State, "every statement I make
today is backed by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we
are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid
intelligence."</i></B>




A year ago Thursday, Secretary of State Colin Powell stood before the
United Nations and said: "Al Qaeda continues to have a deep interest
in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. . I can trace the story of
a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in
these weapons to Al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now
detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as
he himself described it."

Powell's story came to mind after President George W. Bush's
agreement Monday to reexamine intelligence on prewar Iraq, suggesting
that intelligence failures alone were responsible for misperceptions
of the Iraqi threat. Powell's address to the UN last February was one
of the rare instances in which an administration official offered a
look at the raw intelligence used to make the case for war.

These were the details Powell provided: "This senior Al Qaeda
terrorist was responsible for one of Al Qaeda's training camps in
Afghanistan. His information comes firsthand from his personal
involvement at senior levels of Al Qaeda. He says [Osama] bin Laden
and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased Al Qaeda leader Mohammed
Atef, did not believe that Al Qaeda labs in Afghanistan were capable
enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They
needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan
for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq.

"The support that [the captured operative] describes included Iraq
offering chemical or biological weapons training for two Al Qaeda
associates, beginning in December 2000.

He says that a militant known as Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi had been sent
to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring
poisons and gases. Abdullah al-Iraqi characterized the relationship
he forged with Iraqi officials as 'successful.'" Even putting aside
the plaintiff's-lawyer posturing ("Where did they look? They went to
Iraq"), which seeks to make up in emphatic language for what is not
established in fact, this story would not pass muster in any
mainstream newspaper.

First off, it is really not a "firsthand" account. Powell's carefully
vetted wording does not say the source heard anything directly from
bin Laden or Atef, only from "personal involvement at senior levels
of Al Qaeda" - quite possibly, he heard some scuttlebutt. He heard
that Iraq offered help in chemical "or" biological weapons.

Shouldn't the "or" have been a clue that this operative did not have
specific information at all? Nonetheless, Powell declares that the
operative describes "Iraq offering" training but says nothing about
whether any training took place, almost certainly because the
operative does not know. Then he tells of a single emissary trying to
get Iraqi "help" in acquiring poisons and gases. And he quotes the
same captured operative as having heard (from whom?) that the
emissary characterized "the relationship he forged with Iraqi
officials" as "successful."

So, did Iraq actually train Al Qaeda in biological or chemical
weapons? There is no clear indication from Powell's story.

Did Iraq offer to provide "poisons and gases" to Al Qaeda? Powell
knows only that a captured operative heard (somewhere) that an
emissary described his relationship with Iraqi officials
as "successful." And, of course, it is not clear what a "successful"
relationship would mean in this context. They got along well and
agreed to talk further?

Nonetheless, a day after Powell's presentation, Bush flatly
declared, "Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and
biological weapons training."

Last week, Bush's chief weapons inspector, David Kay, said that
almost everything the United States presented to the UN was wrong,
but that Bush, Powell, and the rest of the administration bore no
responsibility for this: The failures were exclusively among the
intelligence agencies and analysts. This week Bush endorsed Kay's
call for an independent inquiry into the intelligence failures.

But the mistaken perception that Iraq provided biological and
chemical weapons training to Al Qaeda was hardly an intelligence
failure. A U.S. intelligence agent debriefed a captured operative and
obtained the sketchy information that Powell related to the UN. But
Powell and Bush provided the extrapolations.

When Powell delivered his case, some UN inspectors shook their heads
in disbelief. But most Americans believed him. They trusted him
because he was secretary of state. Three weeks ago, Powell
conceded, "I have not seen smoking-gun concrete evidence about the
connection" between Iraq and Al Qaeda, "but I do believe the
connection existed."

Now, leaders of the administration are pushing the idea that everyone
was misled about Iraq because of failures in the intelligence
agencies. But any student of history knows that intelligence is
always less than perfect. The extent to which leaders will
extrapolate from intelligence to build a case for a war they believe
in may be this administration's contribution to history.

***
The writer's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.

 Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune




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