The Trial of Saddam Hussein and The Fallout of The War

The Trial of Saddam Hussein

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The fallout in the Middle East from the regime change in Iraq

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Pentagon Tries To Bury Report

Unsurprisingly the Pentagon tried to bury the report, released yesterday, that stated that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida (this of course had been the central plank of Bush's rationale for the invasion of Iraq).

The Pentagon cancelled a planned briefing about the report, and scrapped plans to post its findings on the internet. Unclassified copies of the report would be sent to interested individuals in the mail, military officials told ABC.

Another Pentagon official told ABC that initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive".

Despite the Pentagon's attempts to bury the report, the media are awash with stories about it.

Mission Accomplished!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

No Link To al-Qaida

A detailed review by the the Institute for Defense Analyses (sponsored by the Pentagon) of over 600,000 Iraqi documents, captured after the 2003 US invasion, has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.

The review, "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents", is not due to be published officially to Congress until tomorrow.

The Defence Secretary (Donald Rumsfeld) claimed in September 2002 that the United States had "bulletproof" evidence of cooperation between the al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.

Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed that there were many links between Saddam and al-Qaida in a February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council designed to rally support for the invasion.

Seemingly all of these statements made by Rumsfeld and Powell were based on false/misinterpreted intelligence.

The review was completed last year. However, it has been sat on since then as people have been reluctant to declassify it.