[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 120 (Wednesday, September 29, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9871-S9873]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I am going to respond to my colleague from 
Massachusetts. He has made a pretty vicious attack, I would say, on the 
President of the United States, contending that he has not leveled with 
the American people, that he has to begin telling the truth about what 
is going on in Iraq. These are very serious charges, and I would like 
to try to respond to them.
  The Senator from Massachusetts began by a recitation of why, in his 
view, ``the outlook is so bleak,'' to use his quotation, and why he 
concluded that ``we're losing the war,'' another quotation from the 
Senator.
  I see in the Senator's remarks, and others that I have heard 
recently, a steely determination to keep hopelessness alive. I do not 
think that should be the policy of the United States. The President has 
a much better vision about how to bring the war against militant Islam 
to a conclusion.
  There were no constructive alternatives, as my colleagues will 
recall, from the comments of the Senator from Massachusetts. There were 
no ideas about how we could do better. It was just an attack on the 
President and an assertion that we are losing the war, the implications 
of which were left hanging.
  When he said the President has this attitude of shooting first and 
asking questions later, then perhaps we need to recall that we have 
already been attacked. We did not shoot first. We were attacked 
viciously on 9/11 and it changed everything about our approach to the 
war against militant Islam.
  Secondly, when the Senator from Massachusetts accuses the President 
of painting a rosy picture and then refers to the National Intelligence 
Estimate that predicted some pretty dire consequences, he forgets two 
things. First, President Bush has said repeatedly from the very 
beginning that this would be a very long and difficult conflict. He has 
never wavered from that. In fact, he has tried to inspire the American 
people to continue to persevere in this war.
  One does not inspire people by wringing their hands and talking about 
how we are losing the war. Think about what kind of a message that 
sends to the troops and to the families who are sacrificing, to a mom 
who gets notice that her young son has been killed in Iraq: We are 
losing the war. It is hopeless. The outlook is bleak.
  Well, what are we fighting for? What kind of a message does it send 
to our allies, who some people say they could convince to come into 
this conflict, we are losing the war, now please come in? That is not 
exactly going to persuade them to come into the conflict.
  Finally, and most importantly, what kind of a message does it send to 
the enemy to suggest that they are winning and we are losing? Major 
political figures in this country argue that we are losing the war. It 
gives confidence to the enemies. That is exactly what they want to 
hear. Osama bin Laden has said we are the weak horse and he is the 
strong horse. If we convey that message to him, we increase the 
possibility that he will continue to think he can win and that he will 
continue to engage in this fight.
  We need to break his will. He is testing our will and comments such 
as this are not helpful to challenging the American people to continue 
to persevere in this contest.
  The question is about the American will, and I do not think the 
comments we heard from the Senator from Massachusetts are going to be 
effective in helping to sustain that will. I rather think the approach 
that Winston Churchill took in World War II accentuating the positive, 
yes, but not ignoring the negative and challenging the British people 
and the people of the Allies to persevere in that war is the right 
approach, and that is what President Bush has tried to do.
  The Senator from Massachusetts has confused a couple of issues. 
First, he confuses violence in Iraq with less security at home. I do 
not think we are less secure at home because there is violence in Iraq. 
In fact, one of the reasons we have not been attacked at home for over 
3 years is because we have taken the fight to the enemy and we have 
largely been successful. We have not lost a battle in this war.
  There are battles yet to be fought, and the enemy attacks us with 
guerilla tactics, but we can persevere and win militarily. So I do not 
think we should confuse the fact that there is violence in Iraq and 
therefore conclude we are less secure at home. That is simply not true.

  Secondly, the Senator from Massachusetts alleges that there was no 
relationship, no connection, between the terrorists and the Saddam 
Hussein regime. I want to try to debunk this myth right now, so let me 
quote from the CIA, from the 9/11 Commission, and from George Tenet's 
assessment since we are going to be quoting the National Intelligence 
Estimate. This is what the head of the CIA, George Tenet, said:

       Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-
     Qaida is evolving and is based on sources of varying 
     reliability. Some of the information we have received comes 
     from detainees, including some of high rank.
       We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between 
     Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade.


[[Page S9872]]


  No relationship? According to the CIA, not true.
  Continuing to quote:

       Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qaida have 
     discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.
       Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of 
     the presence in Iraq of al-Qaida members, including some that 
     have been in Baghdad.
       We have credible reporting that al-Qaida leaders sought 
     contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD 
     capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has 
     provided training to al-Qaida members in the areas of poisons 
     and gases and making conventional bombs.
       Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, 
     coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-
     Qaida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will 
     increase, even absent U.S. military action.

  No relationship? No contacts? No connection? Read the intelligence 
reports.
  What did the 9/11 Commission say? Quoting from Thomas Kean, cochair 
of the 9/11 Commission:

       There was no question in our minds that there was a 
     relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

  Let us get the facts straight. If we are going to come to the Senate 
floor and charge the President of the United States with misinforming 
the American people, we need not misinform them ourselves.
  Quoting further from the 9/11 Commission report:

       With the Sudanese regime acting as an intermediary, Bin 
     Ladin himself met with senior Iraqi intelligence officers in 
     Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Ladin is said to 
     have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as 
     assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence 
     that Iraq responded to this request . . . [but] the ensuing 
     years saw additional efforts to establish connections.

  That is from page 61 of the report. From page 66:

       In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's public fatwa against the 
     United States, two Al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq 
     to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation 
     traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and 
     then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps 
     both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin 
     Ladin's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to 
the Iraqis.

  From page 66:

       Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or 
     his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some 
     reported strains with the Taliban. According to the 
     reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in 
     Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his 
     circumstance in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the 
     Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and 
     indicates some common themes in both sides' hatred of the 
     United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that 
     these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a 
     collaborative operational relationship. . . .

  That is the critical distinction. We have to be careful of our 
language, especially when we are accusing the President of the United 
States of misleading the American people. Our language matters. The 
President never alleged an operational link or that Saddam Hussein 
helped to plan the 9/11 attack on the United States, but there is 
plenty of evidence of connections between bin Laden, al-Qaida, other 
terrorists and Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
  The Intelligence Committee report in July of this year reported:

       [F]rom 1996 to 2003, the Iraqi Intelligence Service 
     ``focused its terrorist activities on Western interests, 
     particularly against the U.S. and Israel.

  They go on to quote the letter from George Tenet that I quoted 
before.

       [A]ccording to a CIA report called Iraqi Support for 
     Terrorism, ``the general pattern that emerges is one of al 
     Qaeda's enduring interest in acquiring chemical, biological, 
     radiological and nuclear (CBRN) expertise from Iraq.''

  This is exactly what Senator McCain talked about a few weeks ago, 
what the President has talked about, what the Vice President has talked 
about, our concern of this relationship that would some day, if we did 
not act against Iraq, blossom into fullblooded support, full-blown 
support from Iraq to al-Qaida.
  Finally:

       [T]he Iraqi regime ``certainly'' had knowledge that Abu 
     Musab al Zarqawi--described in Iraqi Support for Terrorism as 
     ``a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner''--was operating in 
     Baghdad and northern Iraq.

  I ask unanimous consent that a New York Times article of June 25, 
2004, which further makes this point, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, June 25, 2004]

     Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says

                           (By Thom Shanker)

       Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin 
     Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid 1990's were part of a 
     broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing 
     the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed 
     document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.
       American officials described the document as an internal 
     report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to 
     seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, 
     including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had 
     become a full-fledged terrorist organization. He was based in 
     Sudan from 1992 to 1996, when that country forced him to 
     leave and he took refuge in Afghanistan.
       The document states that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-
     Saudi propaganda, and that a request from Mr. bin Laden to 
     begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia 
     went unanswered. There is no further indication of 
     collaboration.
       Last week, the independent commission investigating the 
     Sept. 11 attacks addressed the known contacts between Iraq 
     and Al Qaeda, which have been cited by the White House as 
     evidence of a close relationship between the two.
       The commission concluded that the contacts had not 
     demonstrated ``a collaborative relationship'' between Iraq 
     and Al Qaeda. The Bush administration responded that there 
     was considerable evidence of ties.
       The new document, which appears to have circulated only 
     since April, was provided to The New York Times several weeks 
     ago, before the commission's report was released. Since 
     obtaining the document, The Times has interviewed several 
     military, intelligence and United States government officials 
     in Washington and Baghdad to determine that the government 
     considered it authentic.
       The Americans confirmed that they had obtained the document 
     from the Iraqi National Congress, as part of a trove that the 
     group gathered after the fall of Saddam Hussein's 
     government last year. The Defense Intelligence Agency paid 
     the Iraqi National Congress for documents and other 
     information until recently, when the group and its leader, 
     Ahmad Chalabi, fell out of favor in Washington.
       Some of the intelligence provided by the group is now 
     wholly discredited, although officials have called some of 
     the documents it helped to obtain useful.
       A translation of the new Iraqi document was reviewed by a 
     Pentagon working group in the spring, officials said. It 
     included senior analysts from the military's Joint Staff, the 
     Defense Intelligence Agency and a joint intelligence task 
     force that specialized in counterterrorism issues, they said.
       The task force concluded that the document ``appeared 
     authentic,'' and that it ``corroborates and expands on 
     previous reporting'' about contacts between Iraqi 
     intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the 
     task force's analysis.
       It is not known whether some on the task force held 
     dissenting opinions about the document's veracity.
       At the time of the contacts described in the Iraqi 
     document, Mr. bin Laden was little known beyond the world of 
     national security experts. It is now thought that his 
     associates bombed a hotel in Yemen used by American troops 
     bound for Somalia in 1992. Intelligence officials also 
     believe he played a role in training Somali fighters who 
     battled Army Rangers and Special Operations forces in 
     Mogadishu during the ``Black Hawk Down'' battle of 1993.
       Iraq during that period was struggling with its defeat by 
     American-led forces in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, when 
     American troops used Saudi Arabia as the base for expelling 
     Iraqi invaders from Kuwait.
       The document details a time before any of the spectacular 
     anti-American terrorist strikes attributed to Al Qaeda: the 
     two American Embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998, the 
     strike on the destroyer Cole in Yemeni waters in 2000, and 
     the Sept. 11 attacks.
       The document, which asserts that Mr. bin Laden ``was 
     approached by our side,'' states that Mr. bin Laden 
     previously ``had some reservations about being labeled an 
     Iraqi operative,'' but was now willing to meet in Sudan, and 
     that ``presidential approval'' was granted to the Iraqi 
     security service to proceed.
       At the meeting, Mr. bin Laden requested that sermons of an 
     anti-Saudi cleric be rebroadcast in Iraq. That request, the 
     document states, was approved by Baghdad.
       Mr. bin Laden ``also requested joint operations against 
     foreign forces'' based in Saudi Arabia, where the American 
     presence has been a rallying cry for Islamic militants who 
     oppose American troops in the land of the Muslim pilgrimage 
     sites of Mecca and Medina.
       But the document contains no statement of response by the 
     Iraqi leadership under Mr. Hussein to the request for joint 
     operations, and there is no indication of discussions about 
     attacks on the United States or the use of unconventional 
     weapons.

[[Page S9873]]

       The document is of interest to American officials as a 
     detailed, if limited, snapshot of communications between 
     Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden, but this view ends with 
     Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan. At that point, Iraqi 
     intelligence officers began ``seeking other channels through 
     which to handle the relationship, in light of his current 
     location,'' the document states.
       Members of the Pentagon task force that reviewed the 
     document said it described no formal alliance being reached 
     between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence. The Iraqi 
     document itself states that ``cooperation between the two 
     organizations should be allowed to develop freely through 
     discussion and agreement.''
       The heated public debate over links between Mr. bin Laden 
     and the Hussein government fall basically into three 
     categories: the extent of communications and contacts between 
     the two, the level of actual cooperation, and any specific 
     collaboration in the Sept. 11 attacks.
       The document provides evidence of communications between 
     Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence, similar to that 
     described in the Sept. 11 staff report released last week.
       ``Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq 
     during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's 
     secular regime,'' the Sept. 11 commission report stated.
       The Sudanese government, the commission report added, 
     ``arranged for contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda.''
       ``A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three 
     visits to Sudan,'' it said, ``finally meeting bin Laden in 
     1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish 
     training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, 
     but Iraq apparently never responded.''
       The Sept. 11 commission statement said there were reports 
     of further contacts with Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan 
     after Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan, ``but they do not 
     appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship,'' it 
     added.
       After the Sept. 11 commission released its staff reports 
     last week, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney said 
     they remained convinced that Mr. Hussein's government had a 
     long history of ties to Al Qaeda.
       ``This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were 
     orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda,'' Mr. Bush said. 
     ``We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam 
     Hussein and Al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence 
     officers met with bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, in the 
     Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.''
       It is not clear whether the commission knew of this 
     document. After its report was released, Mr. Cheney said he 
     might have been privy to more information than the commission 
     had; it is not known whether any further information has 
     changed hands.
       A spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission declined to say 
     whether it had seen the Iraqi document, saying its policy was 
     not to discuss its sources.
       The Iraqi document states that Mr. bin Laden's organization 
     in Sudan was called ``The Advice and Reform Commission.'' The 
     Iraqis were cued to make their approach to Mr. bin Laden in 
     1994 after a Sudanese official visited Uday Hussein, the 
     leader's son, as well as the director of Iraqi intelligence, 
     and indicated that Mr. bin Laden was willing to meet in 
     Sudan.
       A former director of operations for Iraqi intelligence 
     Directorate 4 met with Mr. bin Laden on Feb. 19 1995, the 
     document states.

  Mr. KYL. I note, concluding with this point, that Abdul Yasim and Abu 
Nidal were harbored in Iraq. The Taliban did not directly involve 
itself in 9/11 or have weapons of mass destruction either, but it 
harbored people like this and that is one reason we went after the 
Taliban and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
  With regard to the connections between Iraq and al-Qaida, the case is 
very clear that they were there and the President stands correct, and I 
hope the Senator from Massachusetts would stand corrected.
  Finally, as to the suggestion that Iraq was a diversion from 
succeeding in Afghanistan, that we have not finished the job there, we 
were very successful in defeating the Taliban and killing a lot of al-
Qaida and capturing a lot of al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and in 
establishing a regime there which will be holding elections. Karzai 
made it very clear when he came to this country and expressed his 
appreciation, just as did Prime Minister Allawi of Iraq, to American 
forces for helping to provide the Afghanis with enough freedom to 
control their own future. I think there is confusion that the only al-
Qaida are on the border between Afghan and Pakistan, and since we have 
not captured every single one of them, including Osama bin Laden, 
therefore our activities in Iraq are responsible for this fact. There 
has been no evidence of that. As a matter of fact, our military 
commanders make the point it is not true, that Iraq was not a diversion 
from anything we had to do in Afghanistan where we were very effective 
and successful.
  To those who convey this sense of panic, that all is going bad, the 
opposite of that is not those of us who support the President's policy 
saying everything is rosy. I do not know that anybody has ever used 
that phrase. If they have, I would like to see it. The President has 
said repeatedly that this is a long and difficult war and it is going 
to require a great deal of perseverance and commitment by the American 
people. But as contrasted by those who create the sense of panic, the 
President has a vision and the President's commanders have a strategy. 
When I saw General Abizaid on television last Sunday, he didn't paint a 
rosy picture. He painted a very realistic assessment. But he also 
portrayed a calm confidence that if we can persevere we can prevail.
  That is what he asked of the American people, to allow the military 
commanders as well as the Commander in Chief to carry out the vision to 
defeat the militant Islamic terrorists wherever they are. As I said, 
they are not only in Afghanistan; they are all over the world including 
primarily in the Middle East. That is why this war has many fronts. It 
is not just Afghanistan. We fought simultaneously to try to gain 
support from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Libyan regime, and from Syria. 
We did what we did in Afghanistan. We have done what we have done in 
Iraq. There are still some places to go, but we have also been in Yemen 
and Sudan, and so on.
  The bottom line here is you can't isolate one place in the world and 
say we have to do that first and win every possible goal there before 
we can do anything else anywhere else. The President has made it clear 
that by going to one of the chief sources of terrorism, namely Iraq, we 
can help to win this war.
  The fact that there was such a connection between the terrorists--
between al-Qaida and the Iraqi regime--is I think validated by the fact 
that they have been able to so successfully continue to attack 
Americans and American forces in Iraq.
  Let's consider that the military commanders just might know what they 
are talking about, No. 1. No. 2, it does no good to wring our hands and 
paint a picture of panic. Realistic assessments, absolutely; truth to 
the American people, absolutely; but leadership that presents a vision 
and a strategy for winning the wider war on terrorism, that is what the 
President has provided. That is why I am very proud to support 
President Bush's efforts in this regard. 3

                          ____________________