Saddam Interrogation: US Still Trying to Show 9/11 Connection as Late as Mid-2004

[kpete]

I'm still reading these reports, but for the moment I'm interested in a paragraph from the June 11 Conversation (it is mislabeled June 1 in the NSA list).
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/24.pdf

Hussen commented he allowed the UN inspectors back into Iraq to counter allegations by the British Government. Hussen stated this was a very difficult decision to make, but the British Government had prepared a report containing inaccurate intelligence. It was this inaccurate intelligence on which the United States was making their decisions. However, Hussein admitted that when it was clear that a war with the United States was imminent, he allowed the inspectors back into Iraq in hopes of averting war. Yet, it became clear to him four months before the war that the war was inevitable.

Though the report doesn't acknowledge this, the British report was the September 24, 2002 White Paper on Saddam's WMD--one that was very similar to our own NIE (this was the "sexed up" dossier, and it made the Niger uranium claim more strongly than our own NIE did). And the report also doesn't acknowledge that Saddam concluded war was inevitable when the US released its own report on what Saddam had "left out" of his WMD declaration on December 19, 2002--precisely "four months before the war." In other words, what Saddam must have been saying is that it was clear the US was using faulty intelligence in September-October 2002, and it became clear with that December 2002 report that they continued to make false claims about his WMD.

Also note, the very last Conversation included here--from June 28, 2004--shows that the FBI was still trying to shore up a claim that Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda at that late date. Apparently, Saddam pointed out,

HUSSEIN stated that the United States used the 9/11 attack as a justification to attack Iraq. The United States had lost sight of the cause of 9/11.

Funny--the dictator noticed what we all noticed too.

more:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/07/02/the-saddam... /
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/02/saddam-iran-threat/

[Old and In the Way]

1. Let's not forget he was hung days before the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006.

Think that was a coincidence?