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Not What They Supposed The terror connection missed by the Clintonistas. by Stephen F. Hayes Four months after the start of the Iraq war, two former senior Clinton administration national security officials took to the pages of the New York Times to demand accountability for the Bush administration's claims about Iraq and terrorism. Or, as they put it in their opening sentence, "Iraq's supposed links to terrorists." Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon wrote that the Bush administration's assertions about Iraqi support for terrorism were "suspect" and demanded scrutiny. One sure way to know the truth about Iraq and terrorism, they...

The Iraqi tyrant didn’t “just” aid anti-American terrorist groups; he explicitly ordered them to attack. By Mark Eichenlaub Links. Ties. Operational links. Sponsorship. These terms have vastly different meanings to different members of the media when they discuss relations between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the al-Qaeda network. This became clear yet again last week when news outlets reported on the Department of Defense-sponsored Iraqi Perspectives Project (all five volumes of which are now available here). The vast majority of news reports focused on a single sentence that was incorrectly taken to mean that no ties, links, relations or connections of...

The Wall Street Journal’s editors took the time to read the Pentagon report on the connections between Saddam Hussein and terrorist groups, and wonder why the national media have ignored the story. The analysis of the Harmony documents got initially misreported, and after the Pentagon released the full analysis, few if any news agencies opted to correct the initial distortions they published — and the WSJ says that leaves Americans misinformed: Five years on, few Iraq myths are as persistent as the notion that the Bush Administration invented a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet a new Pentagon...

Every day there seems to be yet another example of lazy journalism or slanted reporting on this latest Pentagon report about ties between Saddam's regime and terrorists. This time, it's Newsweek. I hate to make a long post, but...sometimes it's necessary. “Saddam’s Files, They show terror plots, but raise new questions about some U.S. claims”Let's go to the woodshed.... President Bush said lots of things about Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq War. But few of his charges grabbed more attention than an unscripted remark he made at a Texas political fund-raiser on Sept. 26, 2002. "After all,...

Five years on, few Iraq myths are as persistent as the notion that the Bush Administration invented a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet a new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq's links to world-wide terror networks, including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood.Naturally, it's getting little or no attention. Press accounts have been misleading or outright distortions, while the Bush Administration seems indifferent. Even John McCain has let the study's revelations float by. But that doesn't make the facts any less notable or true. The redacted version of "Saddam and Terrorism" is the most definitive...

This ought to be big news. Throughout the early and mid-1990s, Saddam Hussein actively supported an influential terrorist group headed by the man who is now al Qaeda's second-in-command, according to an exhaustive study issued last week by the Pentagon. "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." According to the Pentagon study, Egyptian Islamic Jihad was one of many jihadist groups that Iraq's former dictator funded, trained, equipped, and armed.

The L.A. Times saves space on its Sunday front page for a hit piece on John McCain. The main thrust of the piece is to say, in essence, “Nyaah, nyaah, John McCain said that Iraq would be a cakewalk, but it wasn’t.” A little context would be nice. Plenty of liberals were surprised at how easily we overran Baghdad and kicked Saddam out of power. Indeed, plenty of liberals — including Bill Richardson, a strong contender for the second spot on Obama’s ticket — were surprised at how quickly we overran Kabul. So yeah, like most of the rest of...

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had extensive ties to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, according to an official report published by the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses and released through the Joint Forces Command. That report, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, came up with some startling revelations in its 59 pages:

Iraqi Documents Show al Qaeda Ties by Kenneth R. Timmerman A much-publicized report released by the Pentagon last week details the extensive ties between the regime of Saddam Hussein and a wide variety of international terrorist organizations, including Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. “Despite their incompatible long-term goals, many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States,” the report’s authors at the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) state. But instead of reporting on this conclusion, most of the media accounts have focused on a single sentence that appears in the executive summary, stating that the report’s...

Saddam's Dangerous Friends What a Pentagon review of 600,000 Iraqi documents tells us. By Stephen F. Hayes This ought to be big news. Throughout the early and mid-1990s, Saddam Hussein actively supported an influential terrorist group headed by the man who is now al Qaeda's second-in-command, according to an exhaustive study issued last week by the Pentagon. "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." According to the Pentagon study, Egyptian Islamic...

Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that an investigation into over 600,000 documents captured at the end of the invasion of Iraq showed no operational links to al-Qaeda — or at least, that’s how the media reported it. After a strange few days in which the Pentagon delayed the report, it finally hit the internet last night — and it’s clear that the analysis done by the media was superficial at best. If no operational “smoking gun” could be found, the report still shows that Saddam Hussein had plenty of ties to all sorts of terrorist groups, including radical Islamist...

When an Institute for Defense Analysis study seemed to announce that there was “no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda,” the media was quick to parrot the line of Warren P. Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers. Relying on a leaked executive summary of the report, Strobel wrote that “an exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents” found “no evidence” linking Saddam Hussein with Al-Qaeda. Led by the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, the right side of the blogosphere was quick to point out that the report did contain evidence of such connections, focusing mainly on Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which merged with Al-Qaeda...

A review of more than 600,000 documents seized from the possession of Saddam Hussein has concluded that Saddam did indeed have significant contacts with various terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda. Just like President Bush said before the liberation of Iraq in 2003. If you read the New York Times, you don’t know this is true. In fact, you think the opposite is true, because the Times wrote a story about the report that can only be described as a complete lie. Here is how the Times headlined its story: “Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie” Here is the lead: There was...

The latest Iraq Perspectives Project report sponsored by a Department of Defense agency has caused considerable interest in the mainstream media. However, this interest has shown yet another weakness in their journalistic systems. Apparently their proof reading is not very good as they consistently added a negative into the headlines, when they surely meant the opposite. How else does one explain the headlines covering a report which starts with the following sentence: “The Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism.” The actual report...

On February 17 2008, Al-Ekhlaas which is the largest terrorist forum on the internet published an Al Qaeda document that talks about the life of Abou Musaab Al Zarqawi and indicates that Zarqawi came to Iraq before the war to prepare the terrorist insurgency against the US troops. According to the document Zarqawi arrived to the Sunni areas in central Iraq. This document was written by one of Al Qaeda top leaders called “Saif Al Adel”. There were many accounts about Zarqawi presence in Iraq before the war in particular in Northern Iraq with “Ansar Al Islam” an active Al...

The mainstream media seemed to conclude that there were absolutely no ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda, but is that necessarily true? William Kristol, Stephen Hayes, Eli Lake and others pore over the documents released and show that is not exactly the case.

This week opponents of the war were given a treat. They were told-in a single article-based on a single anonymous source-that a report which hadn’t been released said there was never any ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the al-Qaida network of terrorist groups. Millions of the war’s opponents were instantly elated with glee at the idea that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with the war against the al-Qaida terrorist network; that the invasion was completely disconnected from any threat to the United States. Disregarding the misplaced glee for a moment, let’s face some facts. The report...

Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that an investigation into over 600,000 documents captured at the end of the invasion of Iraq showed no operational links to al-Qaeda — or at least, that’s how the media reported it. After a strange few days in which the Pentagon delayed the report, it finally hit the internet last night — and it’s clear that the analysis done by the media was superficial at best. If no operational “smoking gun” could be found, the report still shows that Saddam Hussein had plenty of ties to all sorts of terrorist groups, including radical Islamist...

A new study commissioned by the Pentagon has reviewed over 600,000 documents captured in the invasion of Iraq, and the analysis shows no evidence of operational ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda. It did find operational ties and more between Saddam and other terrorist groups, however, which will likely be lost in an avalanche of I-told-you-sos: An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network.The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this...

The War Card   By John PerazzoFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, February 01, 2008 The New York Times now tells us that a new study entitled “The War Card” has determined authoritatively that during the months leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, top officials in the Bush administration—including the president himself—made “hundreds of claims, mostly discredited since then, linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or warning that he possessed forbidden weapons.” The Times did not report that the study had been conducted by an organization that received more than $1.62 million from George Soros in the last few...