Digital Brainwaves

 ABC News, and just about every other mainstream media news outlet, thought they had their damning evidence against the war in Iraq:

It’s government report the White House didn’t want you to read: yesterday the Pentagon canceled plans to send out a press release announcing the report’s availability and didn’t make the report available via email or online.

Based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion and thousands of hours of interrogations of former officials in Saddam’s government now in US custody, the government report is the first official acknowledgment from the US military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to al Qaeda.

That’s not really what the report says, though. As usual, it’s been spun to make readers believe what they want you to believe, instead of believing the facts. The report does not state there were no links, only that there was no evidence, in the small percentage of files they had examined, of an “operational link” — which is to say, Saddam wasn’t giving al-Qaeda orders.

Richard Miniter, writing for Pajamas Media, goes into great detail on what links were there, and concludes:

No connection? Well, Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi state certainly had a lot of meetings, money changed hands, some terrorist training occurred in Iraq, and a lot of personnel — including Abu Musab al Zarqawi — moved freely through the Iraqi police state. In short, there are connections.

None of this means that Iraq ran Al-Qaeda or had foreknowledge of its most gruesome attacks. It certainly does not mean Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks or even knew about them in advance. [emphasis mine -- P]

Still, for there to be “no connection” between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, it would mean no meetings, no money, no training and no movement of personnel. On the strength of much weaker evidence, Saudi Arabia is “connected” to Al-Qaeda. Why is Iraq the one nation given the benefit of the doubt?

Have a read.