Report: No evidence of link between Saddam & Zarqawi

[deminks]

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/09/report_no_evide.html

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

According to the AP the declassified document, just released 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.

Update at 12:15 p.m. ET. The AP continues:

The report 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."

The long-awaited report, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the committee, is "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts" to link Saddam to al-Qaeda.

AP link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060908/ap_on_go_co/iraq_report_12

[displacedtexan]

1. This is an amazing Friday news dump day, isn't it?

Wow!

[otohara]

6. Always on Friday

let the sheep sleep on it over the weekend and hopefully forget.

[Monkeyman]

7. Yep lets hope KO gets on this one

[janx]

2. Is there a copy of the report online somewhere...

I wonder?

[maddezmom]

4. here's the link:

http://intelligence.senate.gov/

[rodeodance]

13. and looky this comment.

.....The report, two years in the making, comes out amid a series of Bush speeches stressing that pursuing the military effort in Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terrorism, and two months before that policy will be tested in midterm elections.

The report deals with two aspects of prewar intelligence — the role of the Iraqi National Congress and its exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and a comparison of prewar intelligence assessments and postwar findings on weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's links to terrorist groups.

[rodeodance]

14. damm---it was about a yer ago that the CIA already said their was NO link:

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."

[leftchick]

5. Yes in two parts.....

here....http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf

and here.....http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiinc.pdf

kiss your weimie for me. :)

[kurth]

3. "A devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's

unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts."

[0007]

17. What else is new for these murderous war criminals thugs?

[Straight Shooter]

8. bushbots with fingers in ears: "La la la la la, I can't heeeer you." n/t

[madrchsod]

9. ? everyone knows that-even bush admitted it was true

no one will care-gasoline dropped 50 cents this week

[Jim Stark]

24. exactly

I don't recall anyone ever saying there was anyway. My Republican mom and dad could have told you the same thing.
this is a non-story.

[Hosnon]

10. Wasn't this what Christopher Hitchens was talking about on Bill

Maher's season opener?

I believe he said it would require one to believe in an amazing serious of coincidences in order to believe there was not link between Saddam and al-Zarqawi.

Transcript:

HITCHENS: Mr. Zarqawi is in Northern Iraq trying to kill the Kurdish leadership, who...are Saddam’s – by coincidence – main enemies? You can believe anything you like...but you’d have to believe a lot to say that that was coincidence. A lot.

According to the U.S. Senate, Mr. Hitchens, you are and were wrong.

Edit: If that is the case: :nuke:

Edit #2: Names...

Edit #3: Found the transcript and it is the case...

[Kagemusha]

16. Come to think about it, Hitchens is right. There was a link between them.

They were enemies, because Saddam was an apostate and Zarqawi was a man of God. In Zarqawi's mind anyway.

[RedEarth]

11. don't tell the wackos......they don't want to know the truth...

[rodeodance]

12. and the headline is clear. whow.

[Kagemusha]

15. Saddam: "I did not have any relationship... with that terrorist..."

Sad it's come to this.

[Rose Siding]

18. "The administration exploited the public's anxiety"

That was one of Rockefeller's comments in response to the findings -I heard it on the radio just a few minutes ago.

[rodeodance]

23. you go Rocky. Bingo

[Roon]

19. This is great

In Yahoo for the last couple of days the freepers have been howling about the 9-11 movie, but since this information has come to light, they are back to avoiding political and bush chat..LOL..gotta love it

[rodeodance]

20. Senate panel finds no prewar Iraq-Qaeda link (updated: Sen.Roberts )

what an old crouch!


....The committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record) of Kansas, accused Democrats of presenting a misleading version of the committee's findings.

"The additional views of the Committee's Democrats are little more than a rehashing of the same unfounded allegations they've used for over three years," Roberts said in a statement.

[rodeodance]

21. "The president's statement, made just two weeks ago, is flat-out false,"

......Another Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, used the report to accuse Bush of making a false statements about ties between Saddam and Zarqawi, the one-time al Qaeda in Iraq leader killed by U.S. forces.

At an August 21 press conference, Bush told reporters that Saddam had relations with Zarqawi.

"The CIA's October 2005 assessment that Saddam's regime did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates," Levin said.

"The president's statement, made just two weeks ago, is flat-out false," Levin said.

[rodeodance]

26. says CIA disclosed this last OCT (2005)--!!

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."

[Jack Rabbit]

22. Intelligent people do not need a Senate Committee Report to tell them this

We've known it for a long time. We've known the attempt to link Saddam and Jihadist terror is just part of the pre-ivasion pack of lies that now and then still creeps up as a false justification of a naked colonial enterprise disguised as national security or the liberation of the oppressed.

[pink-o]

27. Yeah, we also knew...

...that Colin Powell's speech to the UN Feb 2003 was complete bullshit. We were out in the streets protesting, remember? Us, the peasants. People like me who work in lowly jobs, not the hallowed halls of the US govt.

So how come? Why the fuck did my elected Dem congress people not call it all a lie before the first bomb was dropped??? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that what I've been screaming about for the last 4 years is finally coming to light, but I can't get over the fact that if I knew it was all burning of the Reistag, then why didn't people with far more access to information figure it out?

[calimary]

30. I've been asking the same question. If I could tell it was bullshit,

from my position as a plain ol' American with no government title or special "in's" anywhere, why the HELL couldn't they?

Doesn't it just tear your hair?

[kurth]

25. Thus proving once again that Bush is a habitual liar:

"Imagine a world in which you had a Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi." - George W. Bush, August 21, 2006

[rodeodance]

28. NYT article on this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/washington/09intelcnd...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — The Senate Intelligence Committee said today that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had prewar ties to Al Qaeda and one of the terror organization’s most notorious members, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The report, sure to intensify the debates over terrorism and the Iraq war before the November elections, contains dozens of pages of findings about the former Baghdad dictator and the terrorists who plotted and carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, and finds that they had little in common.

“Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden,” the former Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, told the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was asked about Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda’s leader.

As for the cliché that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Saddam Hussein has told interrogators since his capture in December 2003 that his government had not cooperated with Mr. bin Laden. “He specified that if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the U.S., he would have allied with North Korea or China,” says a passage in the nearly 400-page report.

[underpants]

29. Gotta LOVE Tony Snow's take on this "nothing new"

indeed sadly it isn't

[Generator]

31. Bush isn't worried

He's got prime time on TV on the anniversary of the day that changed America forever-for the worst-to sell the same old lies.

"Devasting and deceptive."

Impeach this plague upon our nation.

[angryxyouth]

32. ABC will have do do some more editing to their mock u mentory