The Iraq-Al Qaeda Report, Squelched No MoreYesterday, news broke that the Pentagon had decided to squelch release of a study that had definitively concluded that there were no operational links between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al Qaeda, a major underpinning of the case for war. There would be no press conference and the report would not be emailed to reporters. Anyone who wanted it would have to get it by mail.
As I observed, it was a disappointingly lame effort at suppressing inconvenient information from the administration that’s set the gold standard.
We were told by the Joint Forces Command that our copy was mailed today. But ABC News has already got its copy and posted it for all to see. So here you go (pdf). Behold! “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e. direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.”