The Bush Lie That Has Killed Almost 4,000 GIs

Link: Exhaustive Review Finds No Link Between Saddam and al Qaida | McClatchy Newspapers

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 week, did confirm that Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

The new study of the Iraqi regime's archives found no documents indicating a "direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report....

... President Bush and his aides used Saddam's alleged relationship with al Qaida, along with Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, as arguments for invading Iraq after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claimed in September 2002 that the United States had "bulletproof" evidence of cooperation between the radical Islamist terror group and Saddam's secular dictatorship.

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell cited multiple linkages between Saddam and al Qaida in a watershed February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council to build international support for the invasion. Almost every one of the examples Powell cited turned out to be based on bogus or misinterpreted intelligence.

As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq. "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims," he said.

The new study, entitled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents", was essentially completed last year and has been undergoing what one U.S. intelligence official described as a "painful" declassification review.

Link: Eight U.S. Soldiers Die in Iraq Attacks | Washington Post

Eight U.S. soldiers died in separate attacks here and in the eastern province of Diyala on Monday, the deadliest day for U.S. troops in more than two months.

U.S. officials announced overnight that three U.S. soldiers were killed and another wounded when an improvised bomb exploded near their patrol in Diyala. An interpreter was also killed. No other details were provided.

In Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed five U.S. troops as they mingled casually with Iraqis in a shopping district. The soldiers had parked their Humvees and stepped out into the warm sun and swirl of people on the main thoroughfare of what was once Baghdad's most elegant neighborhood. ...

... Overall, the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq is nearing 4,000.