*EPF503 06/18/2004
Byliner: Commission Confirms Iraq/Al-Qaeda Link, Hadley Says
(Article by Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley) (470)

(This column by Stephen J. Hadley, who is deputy national security adviser to President Bush, was published in USA Today June 18 and is in the public domain. No republication restrictions.)

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Commission Confirms Links
By Stephen J. Hadley

A 9/11 commission staff report is being cited to argue that the administration was wrong about there being suspicious ties and contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda. In fact, just the opposite is true. The staff report documents such links.

The staff report concludes that:

-- Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden "explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan."

-- "A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting bin Laden in 1994."

-- "Contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan."

Chairman Thomas Kean has confirmed: "There were contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda, a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely there."

Following news stories, Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton said he did not understand the media flap over this issue and that the commission does not disagree with the administration's assertion that there were connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government.

President Bush and members of his administration have said all along that there were contacts and that those contacts raised troubling questions.

For instance, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the leader of a terrorist group that is responsible for a number of deadly attacks throughout Iraq. He and his men trained and fought with al-Qaeda for years. Zarqawi's network helped establish and operate an explosives and poisons facility in northeast Iraq. Zarqawi and nearly two-dozen al-Qaeda associates were in Baghdad before the fall of Saddam's regime. In 2002, one al-Qaeda associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was "good" and that Baghdad could be transited quickly.

It may be that all of the contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda never resulted in joint terrorist attacks. But considering all that we knew, no responsible leader could take for granted that such a collaboration would never happen.

Saddam had threatened American interests for more than a decade, harbored and assisted other terrorists, and possessed and used weapons of mass destruction. Al-Qaeda had declared war on America, and bin Laden had called the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction to attack Americans a "religious duty."

The president did not order the liberation of Iraq in retaliation for 9/11. He sent American troops to Iraq to remove a grave and gathering threat to America's security. Because he acted, Iraq is free, and America and the world are safer.

(Stephen J. Hadley is deputy national security adviser to President Bush.)

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(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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