Senate Report: No Pre-War Link Between Hussein and al Qaeda

News:

Not that it will make any difference to neoconservative dead-enders, but a keenly anticipated Senate report released this afternoon confirms that there was no pre-war intelligence to suggest a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government. That comes as part of two chapters of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s analysis of pre-war intelligence being released today, the rest of which will be delayed until well after the midterm elections. Today’s release includes a declassified October 2005 CIA assessment that Hussein’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates”, contradicting the Bush administration’s claims that Zarqawi’s presence ahead of the invasion was proof of an Iraq-al Qaeda link. White House spokesman Tony Snow quickly dismissed the report as “nothing new”. The full report—assuming the GOP ever allows it to see the light of day—contrasts the White House’s pre-war statements made in public with the intelligence it viewed in private.

Senate Pre-War Intel Reports (PDFs Here)

Senate Pre-War Intel Reports (PDFs Here)
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001490.php

Senate Releases Pre-War Intel Reports

AP reports:

There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war.

The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.

It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government ''did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.''

Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaida. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June this year.

The two sections of the report released by the Senate intelligence committee can be found here:

Report: "Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments"

http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiinc.pdf
Report: "The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress"
http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiinc.pdf

from tpmmuckraker

"He who allows oppression, shares the crime." : Erasmus Darwin

By HobbitGoddessSeptember 8, 2006 - 1:54pm