9/11 panel: New evidence on Iraq-Al-Qaida

Thanks to the recent row stemming from the definition of the word “contacts,” it seems as if the administration is now being forced to show it’s cards, proving once again that yes, there is an Iraq-Al-Qaida connection:

The Fedayeen were a special unit of volunteers given basic training in irregular warfare. The lieutenant colonel, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, has the same name as an Iraqi thought to have attended a planning meeting for the Sept. 11 attacks in January 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was also attended by two of the hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hamzi and senior al-Qaida leaders.

“Shakir is a pretty common name,” said terrorism analyst and author Peter Bergen, “and even if the two names refer to the same person, there might be a number of other explanations. Perhaps al-Qaida had penetrated Saddam’s security apparatus.”

(snip)

Nevertheless, the revelation seems sure to stoke the controversy over the extent of links between al-Qaida and Saddam’s regime, links that were cited by the Bush administration as a justification for the invasion of Iraq.

On Wednesday, the commission published a staff statement saying that contacts between the regime and al-Qaida “do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship” and that, “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States.”

Critics of the Bush administration seized on the comments as evidence that the White House had sought to mislead Americans about the relationship between Saddam and al-Qaida.

Now of course this gets into a whole other debate. Was it the Saddam Fedayeen that were compromised, or was there an open invitation to al-Qaeda to join? What went to al-Qaeda through the Fedayeen? Was al-Qaeda welcome? Did the senior level Ba’athists know of it, and if so precisely what did they do about it?

We may be right back into the whole debate about the definition of the word “contact” again. But at least now we can clearly say there was indeed a connection. What remains to be seen is what degree of collaboration existed.