New Documents Link Saddam To Al Qaeda?

Steven Hayes is working on what would be, were our media not so hoplessly partisan, a major story:

Recently discovered Iraqi documents now being translated by U.S. intelligence analysts indicate that Saddam Hussein's government made extensive plans to hide Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 - and had deep ties to al Qaida before the 9/11 attacks.

The explosive evidence was discovered among "millions of pages of documents" unearthed by the Iraq Survey Group weapons search team, reports the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes.

In the magazine's Nov. 21 issue, Hayes reveals that the document cache now being examined contains "a thick stew of reports and findings from a variety of [Iraqi] intelligence agencies and military units."

Though the Pentagon has so far declined to make the bombshell papers public, Hayes managed to obtain a list of titles on the reports.

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Still other reports suggest that Iraq's ties to al Qaida were far deeper than previously known, featuring headlines like:

• Secret Meeting with Taliban Group Member and Iraqi Government (Nov. 2000)

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• Possible al Qaeda Terror Members in Iraq

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• [Iraqi Intelligence Service] report on Taliban-Iraq Connections Claims

• Money Transfers from Iraq to Afghanistan

While the document titles sound stunning enough to turn the Iraq war debate on its head, Hayes cautions that it's hard to know for certain until the full text is available.

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Hayes also notes that an additional treasure trove of evidence on Saddam Hussein's support for al Qaida may be lost forever.

"When David Kay ran the Iraq Survey Group searching for weapons of mass destruction, he instructed his team to ignore anything not directly related to the regime's WMD efforts," he reports.

"As a consequence, documents describing the regime's training and financing of terrorists were labeled 'No Intelligence Value' and often discarded, according to two sources."

Thanks to Mark.

posted by Ace at 09:26 AM

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