Pentagon Report, Like a Bug, (S)Quashed

The absence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda--and, apparently, the critical media response to that absence--has prompted the Pentagon to squelch a report on the matter.
Produced by the the Institute for Defense Analyses and titled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents," only the executive summary (redacted, natch) has been made available.
The summary document includes quotes such as this one from Saddam: " ... when they say anything about Iraq--[like] Iraq supports terrorism--then they have to say that Iraq has documents on this issue and [we] don't ..."

Says the study, although the "Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism ... [of a] disparate mix of pan-Arab revolutionary causes and emerging pan-Islamic radical movements ... this study found no 'smoking gun' (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda."
Further, the study noted, "the predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq."

Of course, the report runs counter to repeated claims by the Bush Administration that Saddam worked with al-Qaeda.
George Bush in September 2002: "al Qaeda hides, Saddam doesn't, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world. Both of them need to be dealt with. The war on terror, you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."

And to think--what a surprise--that a taxpayer-funded report contradicting administration "intelligence" on the matter hasn't been released to the public (technically, it is available "only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia," according to ABCNews, but it won't be posted online as originally intended.).

Several conservative outlets, such as the Weekly Standard, have in the past repeated the assertion of a linkage between Saddam and al-Qaeda. In 2005, Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn wrote, "the evidence we present below, compiled from revelations in recent months, suggests an acute case of denial on the part of those who dismiss the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship."

What follows is a list of what I imagine an attorney would term, at best, circumstantial evidence--for example:

"1. from 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades.
2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994.
3. The detainee admitted he was a member of the Taliban.
4. The detainee pledged allegiance to the supreme leader of the Taliban to help them take over all of Afghanistan," among others.

My goodness. That surely proves a connection between--what?--a single Iraqi and the Taliban? It's obvious to all of us that, therefore, Osama bin-Laden plotted with Saddam Hussein to bring down the WTC, defeat the US and establish a global Caliphate ruled jointly by Hussein and bin-Laden.


Ah, but there's that pesky 9/11 Report which has this:

"Responding to a presidential tasking, [counter-terrorism chief Richard] Clarke’s office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, titled 'Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks.' Rice’s chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda.The memo found no 'compelling case' that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks ... arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons."
(emphasis added)

And let us might remind ourselves of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Report which found, "the data reveal few indications of an established relationship between al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein's regime before September 11, 2001."

Nevertheless, as George Bush said in 2004, "the reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda."

Behold that Bushism: It's the truth because it's the truth.

Even though it isn't.