Bush Lied: US Senate Intelligence report finds no Saddam-Al Qaeda link

Bush's False Iraq War Justifications Laid Bare

"Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support"

Senate report (pdf)

"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."
President Bush



The Senate Intellignce Committee has found no evidence of links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

In a report issued on Friday, it also found that was little or no evidence to support a raft of claims made by the US intelligence community concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The 400-page report was three years in the making, and is probably the definitive public account of the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

One startling point is this:

In a poll conducted this month by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, a sample of American adults was asked: "Do you think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 11 September terrorist attacks, or not?"

Forty-three percent of those polled answered yes, they believed Saddam was personally involved.

Even though it is well-established that Saddam Hussein was no ally of al-Qaeda, nor did he possess weapons of mass destruction, the original justifications for the invasion for Iraq linger on, often in ways that have strangely mutated on their journey through politics and media.

Cheney claims 'untrue'

In fact, the intelligence agencies had been extremely cautious in suggesting links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

It was Vice-President Dick Cheney who asserted most strongly in public that Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda had an operational relationship.

In a television interview in September 2003, he said there was "a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s... al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained... the Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organisation."

It was "clearly official policy" on the part of Iraq, he said.

Friday's report, issued by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provides another definitive statement that that assertion is simply not true.

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