BY ROHAN PEARCE
US Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5 added a new twist to Washington's propaganda offensive against Iraq. While he repeated the threadbare claims that Iraq has somehow hidden a massive arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and an active nuclear weapons program, Powell also dwelt at length on the "links" between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al Qaeda terrorist group, which is headed by Osama bin Laden.
The aim of the latter accusation was not to convince the Security Council of the urgency of a US attack on Iraq. In the absence of any serious adverse findings by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), the White House is trying to overcome growing US public resistance to a war on Iraq by "proving" that Saddam Hussein's and bin Laden may join forces.
In what was hardly a coincidence, the administration on February 7 upgraded its "terror alert level" to orange — one step down from red, the highest level.
The warmongers in Downing Street and the White House are using the same strategy to convince the world that there is a link between al Qaeda and the Hussein regime as they have persistently used to "prove" that Iraq still possesses "weapons of mass destruction": repeat lies as loudly as possible and as often as possible in the hope that they will be believed.
The broadcast by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network on February 11 of an audiotape recording, believed to be of bin Laden, has been seized upon as "proof" of the al Qaeda/Hussein connection. At a February 12 press briefing, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer told journalists the tape showed that the "interests of the Muslims meet with Saddam Hussein, that is linkage".
'Bin Laden tape'
In reality, the "bin Laden tape" undermines these claims. In the tape, "bin Laden" attacks Hussein and his regime as "infidels" but says that the US war "is primarily aimed at the people of Islam regardless of the removal or survival of the socialist government or Saddam"; hence "honest Muslims" should fight the US invaders.
A February 12 Reuters report noted that the "Bush administration ... seemed eager to play the tape to the masses", in contrast to "not long after 9/11 [when] National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice requested that American news operations not run footage of the terror leader and his virulent anti-American message". This time, Reuters added, "Washington didn't protest the airing of this tape...".
On February 11, Powell testified before the US Senate Budget Committee and commented on the tape, stating that "once again he [bin Laden] speaks to the people of Iraq and talks about their struggle and how he is in partnership with Iraq. This nexus between terrorists and states that are developing weapons of mass destruction can no longer be looked away from and ignored...
"And so we have a regime led by Saddam Hussein who has not accounted for all the weapons of mass destruction they've had in the past, who continues to pursue them, and we have non-state terrorist actors such as al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, that would do anything to get their hands on this kind of material."
Yet, Powell has been unable to provide any credible evidence for this "nexus". Indeed, a classified British government intelligence report, examined by BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, has confirmed the continuing hostility that exists between al Qaeda and the secular Iraqi regime. According to a February 5 BBC report, the document states that, while "there has been contact between al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime in the past", there is unlikely to be an ongoing relationship "due to mistrust and incompatible ideology".
Even FBI head Robert Mueller couldn't bring himself to bend the evidence too far, testifying to the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence on February 11: "Although divergent political goals limit al-Qaeda's cooperation with Iraq, northern Iraq has emerged as an increasingly important operational base for al-Qaeda associates, and a US-Iraq war could prompt Baghdad to more directly engage al-Qaeda [emphasis added]."
In other words: Hussein's regime and al Qaeda don't have the same aims and northern Iraq — the US-protected areas under the control of its Kurdish collaborators — is a base of operations for al Qaeda's "associates".
The February 2 New York Times reported that FBI investigators were "baffled" by the "Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network". A government official told the NYT: "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there".
'Cooked information'
The White House has been placing immense pressure on US intelligence agencies to fabricate "evidence" and analysis that can justify an attack on Iraq. The British Guardian reported on October 9 that "officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being put under intense pressure to produce reports which back the administration's line... In response, some are complying, some are resisting and some are choosing to remain silent.
"'Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA,' said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence... A source familiar with the September 11 investigation said: 'The FBI has been pounded on to make this link [between Hussein and al Qaeda].'"
Indeed, US intelligence agencies' knowledge of al Qaeda's alleged "associates" in northern Iraq, the small fundamentalist group Ansar al Islam, seems limited. The March 5, 2002, issue of the US Nation confirmed that the "State Department did not have extensive information on Ansar al Islam, but one official there said he was aware of its existence and connection to al Qaeda".
On February 8, the Counterpunch web site reported that a letter to the US President George Bush from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group composed "mostly of intelligence officers from analysis side of CIA, but [also from the] operations side" stated: "On the same day you spoke in Cincinnati [October 7], a letter from the CIA to the Senate Intelligence Committee asserted that the probability is low that Iraq would initiate an attack with such weapons or give them to terrorists. Unless: 'Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions'. For now, continued the CIA letter, 'Baghdad appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical/biological warfare against the United States."
Of course, that is based on the assumption that Iraq actually has such weapons, which hundreds of UN surprise inspections have not revealed any evidence of.
'Evidence'
Anthony Cordesman, from the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, commented on the claims of Hussein-al Qaeda links on the February 6 ABC AM program, stating: "I think that this is a really serious problem in intelligence. It's virtually impossible to prove these kinds of conspiracies and so I do believe that it is going to take more evidence and that there will be very different views from different experts."
On his February 5 UN presentation, Powell's "evidence" for the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda "link" was satellite images which he claimed showed a "poison and explosive training centre camp", which "is located in north-eastern Iraq" and run by Ansar al Islam.
The "camp" has since been inspected by journalists. A February 12 report by the Knight Ridder US media conglomerate described it as a "muddy, decrepit, refuse-strewn compound devoid of any signs of deadly substances". The journalist, Jonathan Landay, wrote that "much of the compound had the feel of a lonely outpost, what with big water drums, bedrolls, camouflage backpacks and the ashes of burned garbage. There was also the hint of family life: a child's sandals, women's clothes stacked in a broken refrigerator."
Landay further reported: "Mohammad Hassan, who described himself as an Ansar spokesman, denied that the group receives support from Saddam or harbours al Qaeda members, saying the only Arabs it is sheltering are Iraqi army deserters."
Landay also claimed, citing anonymous Washington officials, that President Bush rejected plans for a covert attack on the "poison lab" last August — indicating that the current "Iraqi terror connection" propaganda onslaught may have not been planned earlier.
The right-wing Kurdish groups — the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish Democratic Party — have been keen to play up speculation of "connections" between Ansar al Islam, al Qaeda and Hussein, since Ansar al Islam challenges the US collaborators' hegemony in northern Iraq.
While Ansar does not rival the PUK and KDP in size or firepower, having just 700 fighters compared to the main Kurdish factions' 70,000 armed guerillas, the fundamentalist group controls small areas of Kurdistan near the Iranian border.
According to the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), Ansar al Islam is based in and around the villages of Biyara and Tawela, which lie north-east of the town of Halabja in the Hawraman region of Sulaimaniya province.
Although based on the Sunni strand of Islam, as is Hussein's regime, HRW states that Ansar al Islam represents a "radical departure from mainstream Sunni Islam as practiced in Iraqi Kurdistan" and has more in common with Wahabism, the official religious ideology of Saudi Arabia. Since the group was formed by a fusion of several Islamic groups in September 2001, it has been engaged in an armed conflict with the PUK.
In a February interview in the German magazine Der Spiegel, the leader of Ansar al Islam Mullah Krekar said that the group was "a political organisation, which, like 18 other Kurdish organisations, fights for the liberation of Kurdistan. We represent the interests of the Muslim population in Iraq." Krekar told the interviewer that "Saddam's regime and party are enemies of Islam, just like the Kurds being the enemy of Saddam".
On January 31, Krekar told Agence France Presse: "I have not had any link with Saddam Hussein, with Osama bin Laden or with al-Qaeda. Not in the past, not now, not in the future ... Not direct nor indirect... If they [the US government] give me a visa, I will go to America and they can catch me in an airport and then I can prove that I have nothing against America and that America has nothing against me beyond a political disagreement."
While denying links to bin Laden and Hussein, Krekar has warned that he might soon reveal his "links" with the US regime. A February 1 AFP report stated that Krekar has "threatened ... to produce evidence of his contacts with Washington prior to the September 11 suicide hijackings. 'I have in my possession irrefutable evidence against the Americans and I am prepared to supply it ... if [the US] tries to implicate me in an affair linked to terrorism', Mullah Krekar ... told Al-Hayat...
"Krekar told the Arabic-language daily he had been approached by the United States before September 11. 'I had a meeting with a CIA representative and someone from the American army in the town of Sulaymaniya at the end of 2000. They asked us to collaborate with them ... but we refused to do so', he said."
From Green Left Weekly, February 19, 2003.
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