9-11 panel could be a threat to Bush

By Dana Milbank
The Washington Post

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After the commission staff released its findings Wednesday that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida — challenging an assertion Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have made for two years — Bush declared again that there was, in fact, a relationship.

Republican and some Democratic strategists agree that many details of the controversy do not pose a grave threat to Bush's re-election chances.

The significance, rather, is whether Bush's Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, can use the findings to split the Iraq war from the war on terrorism in the public's mind, and, more broadly, raise doubts about Bush's credibility and competence by building on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and miscalculations about the Iraqi resistance. Bush long has linked the Iraqi invasion to his popular war on terrorism.

"The 9-11 report is just one more issue that casts doubt on the truthfulness of this White House," said Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's campaign spokeswoman. "This White House is operating under a cloud of secrecy, and the American people have lost the ability to trust them."

Leaders of the commission last week invited Cheney to provide intelligence that would buttress the White House's insistence that there were close ties between Saddam and al-Qaida, a panel member said.

Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton told The New York Times they wanted to see more information after Cheney said Thursday that he "probably" knew things about Iraq's ties to terrorists that the commission did not know.

The panel also wants to question national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet again.

Many Republicans are furious about the commission — although its members are evenly split between the two parties and it is chaired by a Republican appointed by Bush.

The panel has become "a tool for partisan politics," Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, a member of the House Republican leadership, said last week.

The commission and its related disputes, Republican pollster David Winston said, are "complicating things, because this administration wants to get out information about how the economy is doing."
 
Bush's aides have sought to blunt the Democratic offensive by arguing that Kerry and the media have mischaracterized the commission's findings.

"The 9-11 commission came to the same conclusion as the administration regarding ties between Iraq and al-Qaida," said the Bush campaign's communications director, Nicolle Devenish. She said this is Kerry's "desperate attempt to put a negative spin on what was broad consensus between the administration and the commission."

Similarly, Cheney, on CNBC, said the media had been irresponsible in reporting the panel's findings. "What they (the commission) were addressing was whether or not they (Iraq) were involved in 9-11," he said. "They did not address the broader question of a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida in other areas, in other ways."

In fact, commission spokesman Al Felzenberg on Friday confirmed that the panel was addressing the broader relationship. "We found no evidence of joint operations or joint work or common operations between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's government, and that's beyond 9-11," Felzenberg said.

Whatever its merits, the White House effort to rebut the findings has been intense, much as it was against Richard Clarke in March when the former White House counterterrorism chief testified that the Bush administration ignored al-Qaida in its obsession with Iraq.

One reason for this sensitivity can be found in a poll last week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. The poll found improved support for Bush (48 percent) and for the Iraq war (55 percent) — in large part because Americans have been paying more attention to other issues, such as the death of Ronald Reagan. The commission, however, has helped to return attention to the disputed justifications for the Iraq war.