Iraq & Al-Qaeda

The Campus Antiwar Network (CAN ) is an independent, democratic, grassroots network of campus- and school-based antiwar committees. The points of unity of CAN are: 1. We stand opposed to all US wars of aggression 2. We stand opposed to the Campus occupation of Iraq 3. We support the right of the Iraqi people to self- determination 4. We demand the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq 5. We demand that the US government pay reparations to the Iraqi people 6. We stand opposed to the oppression of the Palestinian people and Antiwar the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip 7. We stand opposed to racist scapegoating and all attacks on civil liberties 8. We demand money for education, jobs and healthcare, not war and occupation! Network Iraq & al-Qaeda CAMPUSANTIWARNETWORK by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, New York University, WWW.ANTIWARNETWORK.ORG and Emily Goldstein, Vassar College page 1 iraq & al-qaeda campus antiwar network campus anti-war network iraq & al-qaeda page 6 Endnotes IIRAQ && AL-Q-QAEDAA 1. Meet the Press, NBC, 9/14/03. A CAMPUS ANTIWAR NETWORK PAMPHLET 2. "Is there anything they don't lie about?" Socialist Worker, 9/26/03. 3. Shaun Waterman, "White House 'delayed 9/11 report,'" United Press International, "We learned more and more that there was a 7/25/03. relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched 4. Bill Vann, "Iraq and Al Qaeda: Another lie unravels," World Socialist Web Site, backthrough most of the decade of the '90s." 6 / 2 4/ 0 3 5. Walter Pincus, "Report Cast Doubt on Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection," Washington —Dick Cheney, Sept. 14, 2003, explaining why he found it "not surprising " Post, 6/22/03. that more than two-thirds of Americans thought Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks.1 6. James Risen, "Threats and Responses: The View from Prague; Prague Discounts an Iraqi Meeting," The New York Times, 10/21/02. 7. Bill Vann, "Iraqi tie to September 11 hijacker debunked," World Socialist Web Site, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was 10/23/02. involved in September 11." 8. Scott Ritter and William Rivers Pitt, War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn' t Want You to Know (Context Books, 2002), pp. 9. —George W. Bush, three days later.2 9. Pincus. ne of the major justifications for the war on Iraq was a supposed 10. Tabassum Zakaria, "White House Gave Inaccurate Iraq Picture, Ex-Intel Official," Reuters, 7/9/03. link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. This complemented the 11. Bruce B. Auster, Mark Mazzetti and Edward T. Pound, "Truth and Consequences: Bush administration s arguments about Iraq s alleged weapons of O ' ' New questions about U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass terror," U.S. mass destruction, because it raised the specter of a terrorist attack involving News and World Report, 6/9/03. biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons. The danger of Iraq having WMD was 12. Meet the Press, NBC, 3/16/03. suddenly magnified, as was Iraq's importance in the "war on terror." The 13. Ritter and Pitt, War on Iraq, pp. 51. alleged link also evoked the public's anger, grief, and fear surrounding 9/11, 14. Kane Pryor, "A national state of confusion," Salon, 2/6/03. and redirected these feelings towards the administration's chosen target. And by 15. Ronald Brownstein, "Support Grows for Military Actions, L.A. Times, 4 5 03. associating the Iraq war with 9/11, the Bush administration created an " / / atmosphere unwelcoming towards dissent from the war. Yet there has never 16. Vann, "Iraq and Al Qaeda: Another lie unravels." been any evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and there is ample reason to believe no such link would have existed. Recently members of the Bush administration—including Bush himself and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld—have been forced by increasing public skepticism and opposition to the occupation to acknowledge that Iraq played no role in the 9/11 attacks. But the Bush administration created and actively promulgated the opposite impression. The Administration's disingenuous page 5 iraq & al-qaeda campus antiwar network campus anti-war network iraq & al-qaeda page 2 allegations of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda were designed to garner Scott Ritter, a former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq and a former support for a war that had nothing to do with protecting Americans. member of the Marines Officer Corps (as well as a Republican who voted for Bush in 2000), says just the opposite: "There are no facts to back up claimed There's no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Iraq has no history of dealing 13 Former Senator Max Cleland, a member of the independent commission withterrorists of this nature." set up to evaluate 9 11, summed up: "The administration sold the connection / (between Iraq and al-Qaeda) to scare the pants off the American people and Rejecting the case for war justify the war. .There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of bin Laden's terrorist followers. .What you've seen here is the manipulation of Before the Iraq war, a Knight Ridder poll showed that nearly half of 3 intelligence for political ends." Americans surveyed believed, erroneously, that there were Iraqis among the Sept. 11 hijackers.14 During the war, a Los Angeles Times poll showed that 59 Evidence gathered before the war by Bush's own administration percent of respondents were convinced, despite all available evidence, that contradicted the idea of an Iraq-al-Qaeda connection. During US interrogations, Saddam was either partly or mostly responsible for Sept. 11.15 And some US captured al-Qaeda agents Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, soldiers in Iraq carry pictures of the World Trade Center inside their Kevlar independently said al-Qaeda had not cooperated with Iraq in any way, and that 16 vests to remind them of why they're there. Osama bin Laden would not entertain the idea of doing so because, as was well known in intelligence circles before the war, bin Laden considered Saddam Clearly, the Bush administration s allegations about a Hussein-al-Qaeda ' Hussein an "infidel. 4 And a classified "National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, link have been effective in shaping public perception and persuading people to " " obtained by the Washington Post, expressed the view of top US intelligence support the war in Iraq. But as the Bush administration s justifications for the ' agencies when it said that claims of a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda war are revealed as lies, Americans increasingly question why their military is in were not credible.5 Iraq. The resistance in Iraq and the public unraveling of every justification to the war are reducing Bushs support every week. The Administration's No credible evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda has backpedaling on their lies about Iraqi involvement in 9/11 show that public ever been found. opposition can limit what they can get away with. Join the Campus Antiwar Network in exposing Bush's lies and helping to . But Bush lied and said there was build an even stronger movement against the occupation and against Bush's future war plans. However, from the very beginning, Bush's administration encouraged the false belief that Iraq was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Retired General Wesley Clark (the former NATO commander) said on Meet the Press on June 15 that, "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 on Saddam Hussein." He continued, "[I]t came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to page 3 iraq & al-qaeda campus antiwar network campus anti-war network iraq & al-qaeda page 4 be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But—I'm willing to say it, but Widespread misinformation was regularly encouraged by statement such what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence." This clear example of as the following, made by Bush during the State of the Union Address: disregard for the truth in favor of politically expedient misinformation is "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by typical of the Bush administration's tactics in justifying the war on Iraq. people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could One of the only pieces of "evidence" ever offered for an Iraq-al-Qaeda provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their connection was an alleged meeting between "9/11 mastermind" Mohamed Atta own. and a supposed Iraqi spy, said to have occurred in Prague on April 9, 2001. Bush " administration officials used this to claim that Iraq had helped finalize plans for But William Rivers Pitt (of truthout.org) explained, "The idea that the 9/11 attacks. In fact, there's no reason to think this meeting ever took place Hussein has connections to fundamentalist Islamic terrorists is laughable—he is —but the Bush administration continued to repeat it long after this became a secular leader who has worked for years to crush fundamentalist Islam within clear. Iraq, and if he were to give weapons of any kind to Al Qaeda, they would use those weapons on him first.

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