Iraq’s Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War
Links Were Cited to Justify U.S. Invasion, Report Says
By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writer

A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.

Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda’s overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained former deputy prime minister, has told the FBI that Hussein “only expressed negative sentiments about [Osama] bin Laden.”

The report also said exiles from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) tried to influence U.S. policy by providing, through defectors, false information on Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities. After skeptical analysts warned that the group had been penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including Iran’s, a 2002 White House directive ordered that U.S. funding for the INC be continued. …

As recently as Aug. 21, Bush suggested a link between Hussein and Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed by U.S. forces this summer. But a CIA assessment in October 2005 concluded that Hussein’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates,” according to the report.

“The president is still distorting. He’s still making statements which are false,” said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence committee member. …

In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that “Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful [chemical and biological weapons] knowledge or assistance.” A year later, Bush said: “Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.” …

“It is such a blatant misleading of the United States, its people, to prepare them, to position them, to, in fact, make them enthusiastic or feel that it’s justified to go to war with Iraq,” said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee’s vice chairman. “That kind of public manipulation I don’t know has any precedent in American history.”

More GOP Districts Counted as Vulnerable
Number Doubled Over the Summer
By Dan Balz and David S. Broder
Washington Post Staff Writers

Facing the most difficult political environment since they took control of Congress in 1994, Republicans begin the final two months of the midterm campaign in growing danger of losing the House while fighting to preserve at best a slim majority in the Senate, according to strategists and officials in both parties.

Over the summer, the political battlefield has expanded well beyond the roughly 20 GOP House seats originally thought to be vulnerable. Now some Republicans concede there may be almost twice as many districts from which Democrats could wrest the 15 additional seats they need to take control. …

Meanwhile, finger-pointing has begun as Republicans here and around the country blame the White House and the GOP congressional leadership for leaving Republican candidates in such a vulnerable position.

Despite these advantages, Democratic strategists say they see ways they could fall short of their goal of capturing one or both houses of Congress. They cite what they consider to be a superior Republican get-out-the-vote operation, a coming barrage of negative ads aimed at their challenger candidates, and a sizable cash-on-hand disparity between the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee.

Even with the political winds at their backs, Democrats, to take control, must defeat a significant number of incumbents — ordinarily one of the hardest tasks in politics — and, in most cases, do so in districts that have voted consistently Republican in recent presidential races. …

[M]ost of the Democrats interviewed for this report predicted that their party will win a House majority with votes to spare. “That’s as of September 1,” one well-placed source said, “but on September 1, 2004, John Kerry would have been elected president.”

Democrats have learned the hard way to fear the ability of the White House and the Republican National Committee to dominate the final days of any campaign, when the money and organization the GOP can muster come fully to bear.

GOP Focus on Security Issues to Sideline Other Matters By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writer

Congress will return to Washington this week with the Republican majorities in both chambers at risk and GOP leaders planning to turn the floors of the House and Senate into battlegrounds over which political party can best protect the country from terrorists and other security threats.

But in devoting the few remaining legislative days almost exclusively to security issues, Republicans will leave major domestic tasks undone, including President Bush’s prized immigration overhaul and long-promised legislation to toughen the restrictions on lobbying after a wide-ranging corruption scandal. No budget plan for 2007 will be completed. Promised relief for seniors struggling with their Medicare prescription drug plans will have to wait. And as many as eight of the 11 bills needed to fund the government will not be passed before the November elections.

That has some Republicans worried. …

Work promises to start slowly. After a five-week summer break, the centerpiece of the House’s schedule for the coming week is a bill to toughen rules against horse slaughtering. …

“Our fight is with the Republicans,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. “They have weakened our military, hurt our position in the world, spent away our children’s future and again not made America safer.” …

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said he fully expects Republicans to go back to the political playbook that worked so well in the past two elections. But he added: “They’ve run that play one too many times.”