PENTAGON: SADDAM HUSSEIN HAD NO AL-QAIDA TIES
The Bryant Park Project, March 14, 2008 · Contradicting the Bush administration’s main case for the war in Iraq, the Defense Department for the first time has formally concluded that Saddam Hussein had no direct ties to al-Qaida. The Pentagon now says the former Iraqi president’s regime sheltered and supported terrorist groups, but Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida was not among them.
The report is significant because it is based on the Pentagon’s own review of 600,000 pages of original documents seized in Iraq after the United States-led coalition invaded the country in 2003, says Warren Strobel, a foreign affairs reporter for McClatchy newspapers.
Strobel says the report is not the first to state definitively that there was no operational link between Saddam and al-Qaida — a 2005 C.I.A. report came to a similar conclusion. But Strobel stresses that the Pentagon’s own reporting probed giant Iraqi treasure trove of source material. He says that after years of statements by influential military leaders — including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who once suggested there was “bulletproof evidence” for an Iraq-al-Qaeda link — the military apparatus has discredited the thinking that helped lead America into war.
“It’s there in black and white,” Strobel says. “If there was [a connection], they would have found a hint of it in 600,000 pages.” MORE
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