- WASHINGTON -- U.S. Defence
Secretary Don ald Rumsfeld said he was "misunderstood" when he
claimed Monday night that there was no "hard evidence" linking
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
-
- Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York,
Rumsfeld said, "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard
evidence that links the two."
-
- But hours after his appearance, he issued a statement
saying his comment "regrettably was misunderstood."
-
- "I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there
were ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq," Rumsfeld said in a statement
on the Department of Defence website, posted hours after his
appearance.
-
- Rumsfeld said in the statement that the assessment of
the link is based on points provided to him by then-CIA director George
Tenet.
-
- Rumsfeld said the CIA had concluded there was solid
evidence
of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaeda members and very reliable reporting
of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a
decade.
-
- The final report by the 9/11 commission said Iraqi offici
als might have met with Osama bin Laden or his aides in 1999. But it
concluded
there was "no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever
developed
into a collaborative operational relationship."
-
- Meanwhile, the former U.S. administrator of Iraq said
Monday that the United States "paid a big price" by not having
enough troops in the country following the invasion.
-
- In a speech Monday night, Paul Bremer insisted that he
was "more convinced than ever that regime change was the right thing
to do."
-
- Bremer said that when he arrived in Iraq in May 2003,
he found "horrid" looting and a very unstable situation.
-
- "We paid a big price for not stopping it because
it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," said Bremer in an
address
to a Virginia insurance group, which released a summary of his
remarks.
-
- Bremer said they "never had enough troops on the
ground."
-
- He said that despite the ongoing violence in Iraq, he
was "optimistic" about Iraq's future.
-
- Copyright © CBC 2004
-
- http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/
- national/2004/10/05/rumsfeld041005.html
|
