ABC et al. the other 'prestigious' media outlets should be ashamed with the racket of lies they've been promulgating about this report. Page 34 renders the following, "Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda." The IDA clearly states that there was a level of understanding and indirect cooperation between Osama bin Laden and the former Ba'athist regime. Yes, it's true that the report could not find a direct connection, but that's because it doesn't know yet if one existed, it didn't say there wasn't one. This debate will continue to be one of heavy speculation. There is no solidified answer, period!

It's interesting to read all the comments about the U.S. military report that seriously questions any real links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. I'm convenced there weren't any.

But what is more intersting to me is the lack of reporting of the U.S. support for the Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Al-Maliki of the Islamic Dawa Party, a terrorist organization, headquartered in Iran, which was responsible for attacking the U.S. embassy in Kuwait and 1983 killing American citizens.

Some one from ABC should investigate that terrrorist attack by what became known as the "Kuwaiti 17." Clearly, because of the U. S. military and monetary support of Maliki and his Iraqi regime there are links between the Dawa Party and the U.S. Why are we supporting this terrorist group?

By the way, the comments by earthisnotflat seems to be right on the "money." I would love to see the record of the big energy meeting that took place between the oil giants (Exxon-Mobile, Standard Oil, etc.) and the Bush administration in Texas just before the start of the Iraqi War.

I could be wrong, but I'd bet we would discover that there was a huge concern about Iraq switching from dollars to Euros for the purchase of oil. Oh, that's right, no one can get the record of that meeting because it has been declared "off limits" by Bush because of executive privilege, which the U.S. Supreme court upheld. Very interesting, indeed!

Now that the report is available for all to read, and many have now read and commented, the ABC report and comments by leftists here bely total ignorance. Anyone who reads the 94 page report will come away with 2 very distinct observations. 1. What Saddam did not actually retain of his WMD programs, he told people he still had them. 2. Despite no direct connection to Al Qaeda, Saddam worked with the precursor to AQ and many other terrorist orgs. Anyone who denies these things has not read the report.

A million dead or maimed, five million family members devastated, economic disaster for decades to come, war wounded physically and many more mentally, for money to contractors, ignorance, and hubris of several (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc).

What a price to pay.

When you read accounts of the National security meetings at camp David leading up to the war; I realize there was no conspiracy or "great plan" the Bush/Cheney folks were just stumbling around in the dark, they really believed. God help us!

I went to the Joint Forces Command web site and found no such report. When I put in "Saddam and al Qaeda" link, it came back nothing.

The truth is really important. Produce the whole report and the link.

I would love to read the report but for some mysterious reason I can't seem to download it. ?????

"So, the people who lied"

NO ONE LIED!

Get it through your heads. We made a mistake. How hard is this really to understand?

I think we ought to bring formal charges against all leftists for their "Bush lied" lie.

French told us...

A stabilizing force?

By attacking Iran and by invading Kuwait and by attacking the Kurds within his borders? Nevermind the terrorist training camps inside of Iraq or the harbored terrorists or the payments to "martyr's" families.

Thats some stability.

For anyone who's been paying attention the last 6 years, there is no "NEWS" here. Saddam was a ass but was no threat to the USA. He WAS, however a stabilizing force within the region via his threats and history. Now, thanks to Bush and his administration manufactured war, the region is more of a mess then ever. And what was gained? A trillion dollars debt, thousands of dead American heros, and Iraq a total destroyed mess that the American taxpayers are paying for. Where was ABC News and the rest of the media when all this was being spouted as truth by the administration? News media is now a sound bite collector to be used/misused by those who can. Whatever happened to investigative reporting of truth?

Just because it's fun to shout questions into an echo chamber---
How can your headline say the exact opposite of what the report says? Did you forget to read it? No, wait, you read the executive summary and stopped, didn't you? Nice quality reporting there, ABC...

From Chris Linthwaite,"Hardly surprising. Saddam Hussein was a sunni moslem, and Alqaeda consists mainly of Shia Moslems following the Wahhabi faith based in Saudi Arabia. They hate each other."

You win the prize for the most ignorant in today's blog world. Al-Qaeda is Sunni and Saddam was Sunni. Maybe if the libs would educate themselves a bit about what they try to protest they would actually see the truths. Iraq issues didn't begin with this President Bush, it began with his father and went through the hands of President Clinton. For once I wish the libs would research the countless connections that were claimed by the Clinton administration and the countless references to Iraq's WMD programs as made by the Clinton's administration. If President Bush ever makes even a tenth of what's classified on Iraq available to the public the lib's world would be turned upside-down and inside-out. Hopefully he'll do it right before the election and make the libs realize how ignorant they really are.

Facts don't matter to ABC "news"; spin the story to support their masters in the DNC. It doesn't matter that ABC itself reported the links between Saddam and AQ in the 90s when President Clinton and the senate voted (100-0, if memory serves correctly) for "regime change in Iraq". It matters not to ABC that clinton/Gore/Albright claimed knowledge of WMD in the 90s to support the bombing. To ABC, the term "WMD" was invented by President Bush.
ABC is not news, it is propaganda, just like NBC and CBS. Is it any wonder that 70% of the Americans doesn't trust the mainstream media? The media lies, people die.

ABC and the rest of the MSM are sticking to their template no matter how many links are shown. BTW ABC, where's that Mark Foley indictment?

read in the report copies of Iraqi documents stating that Iraq was the main funder for Afgan Gulbuddin Hekmatyar since 1989. Go read about him on Wikipedia. It states he worked closely with bin Laden in the early 1990's (that is while Iraq was funding him by the way), and He claims he and his forces were responsible for saving Bin Laden in Tora Bora.

No links, nothing to see here.

Just read the report and see that Saddamm and Al qaeda only funded the same groups, had the same goals, and used the same terrorist tactics. But that is ok, as long as Saddamm never habored al Qaeda terrorsts, Whoops, he did that too.
Never mind, there were no links.

Can people read anymore. Obviously No Child Left Behind has been a failure. Egyptian Islamic Jihad is the foundation of Al-Qaeda and any links to that group is links to Al-Qaeda. Spice it, dice it anyway it chews and it comes out the same, there were links to Al-Qaeda. Barack's first name was Barry but changing his name didn't change who he is.
Why don't people just read the report for what's in it, not for what they do or don't want in it?
For those here complaining about the cost of the Iraq War, Obama voted 4 times and $400 billion later for the funding.
Obama, July 2004,"The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster,"."It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective."

this 'reporting' is positively SHAMEFUL. Page 35 of this report shows and organization with FINANCIAL links to Al Qaeda, that was SUPPORTED by Iraq had a policy of killing Jews, Americans, Soldiers etc wherever they could find them.
But yeah, why post that when you can create a sensation and get morons like: Posted by: Joe MUrphy | Mar 13, 2008 10:09:04 PM up in an outrage about 'war crimes' and any other number of ridiculous claims.
PS. link to this warrant please. Never heard of it and I read German papers everyday.

ABC News has requested and obtained a copy of the Pentagon study which shows Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaeda.

It is amazing how the Democrat media chooses to rewrite history as documents come to light that show the opposite of what they report.

Dougster58 comes out and says "Read the report." and proceeds to ignore the most incriminating evidence, just as ABC News did.

MataHarley, jack moss, Tim, and Mark have it right, and right on the money. There were ties between Saddam and bin Laden. There were links between Saddam and bin Laden. The idea that "no direct operational links" becomes "no links" is ridiculous; they are two different sentences with two different meanings. As parts of the report show, there were plenty of indirect links between Saddam and bin Laden.

ABC News should be ashamed of itself for its headline and reporting on this. But they won't. There is no shame for "liberals".

There is no substitute for bypassing journalist headlines by authors with an aversion to reading.

Contrary to many media's headlines, an established relationship of support between Saddam and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (aka Islamic Jihad Organization) is indeed a "direct link". EIJ was led by Zawahiri from 1993 to 1998, when he merged the EIJ with al Qaeda.

Are we to assume that Saddam, afater dealing with Zawahiri's group for so long, suddenly ostracized him for the group name change/merger?

Then there's that pesky detail of documented meetings between Mulla Omar's Defense Minister, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, and Saddam in Nov of 1999. The Maulana is known today for his JUI-F party in Pakistan, and was a founding father of the Taliban under Bhutto's ministry.

Saddams' agreement to aid the Taliban in 1999, via the Maulana, is an indirect link to AQ - as OBL had moved AQ headquarters from the Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Money to the Taliban equates to cash available to AQ as well.

One might put the headline into perspective when you read the "Conclusion" Section V... which would be very inconvenient for those who have proclaimed Saddam was not a threat. The last sentence pretty much says it all.

"Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces."

Suggest you all go read it all before forming some less than correct conclusions based on a reporter's headline. Find the full report at http://a.abcnews.com/images/pdf/Pentagon_Report_V1.pdf

There is no substitute for bypassing journalist headlines by authors with an aversion to reading.

Contrary to many media's headlines, an established relationship of support between Saddam and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (aka Islamic Jihad Organization) is indeed a "direct link". EIJ was led by Zawahiri from 1993 to 1998, when he merged the EIJ with al Qaeda.

Are we to assume that Saddam, afater dealing with Zawahiri's group for so long, suddenly ostracized him for the group name change/merger?

Then there's that pesky detail of documented meetings between Mulla Omar's Defense Minister, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, and Saddam in Nov of 1999. The Maulana is known today for his JUI-F party in Pakistan, and was a founding father of the Taliban under Bhutto's ministry.

Saddams' agreement to aid the Taliban in 1999, via the Maulana, is an indirect link to AQ - as OBL had moved AQ headquarters from the Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Money to the Taliban equates to cash available to AQ as well.

One might put the headline into perspective when you read the "Conclusion" Section V... which would be very inconvenient for those who have proclaimed Saddam was not a threat. The last sentence pretty much says it all.

"Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces."

Suggest you all go read it all before forming some less than correct conclusions based on a reporter's headline.

You all need to read the report again.

this revelation from page 34? "Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda -- as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision." (The example given in the report is the Army of Muhammad in Bahrain, a group the Iraqi Intelligence Service describes as "under the wings of bin Laden.")

And there is this line from page 42: "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."

Sounds like "links" to me, but then I wouldn't want to upset the script that the left and the MSM have followed up to this point.

If you look hard enough at a guy like Saddam and his regime, naturally you will find connections to anti-West groups of various kinds - Saddam was anti-West, after all. Maybe not Al-Qaeda, but almost certainly something else. For those of you who continue to insist Saddam had links to terrorist groups and had to be taken out, I say, that is not a justification for the action taken by the U.S. in Iraq. There are plenty of world leaders who are anti-American and actively working against American interests, but we don't illegally invade their countries and take down their regimes. This Iraq war was a foolish, tragic mistake by a foolishly incompetent man (men, if you want to include VP Cheney). No one thinks that if US forces remain in Iraq for a few more years, the tribal and religious strife will somehow, miraculously sort itself out. No one, that is, except old-school, intellectually strait-jacketed thinkers like John McCain. This will continue to be a nightmare, sucking down our resources and taking young people's lives, until we elect leaders who are free of this old, "America can't back down because then the terrorists win" mentality. The mentality that says America must use force and might to prevail no matter the rationale, no matter the cost, no matter the disruption to regional and world order, and no matter the corrosive effect on our economy. This is not a contest to see who can be "tougher", to see who has more mettle, more commitment, more persistence. I am quite certain that a decision by a sane, thoughtful leader to end America's involvement in this conflict will not mean the end of America, of its influence, of its standing in the world. America has plenty of effective ways to exert its influence for good in the world, and if terrorists proclaim a "win" when we leave Iraq, I believe they will soon find their "win" to be utterly worthless.

Why are BUSH, CHENEY, RICE and RUMDUM not being arrested and charged with WAR CRIMES??? There is an arrest warrant already out for RUMDUM in Germany..