Originally posted by VOR
It wouldn't matter. You wouldn't believe it.
Excuse me while I post a couple things. Interpret it as you please.
Report On The U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assesments On Iraq
http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdfReport Of The Select Committee On Intelligence On Postwar Findings About Iraqs WMD Programs And Links To Terrorism And How They Compare to Prewar Assesments.
http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdfAdditional Info: most of which is found in the PDFs
2002 DIA reports
In February 2002, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency issued Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary No. 044-02, the existence of which was revealed on 9 December 2005, by Doug Jehl in the New York Times, which impugned the credibility of information gleaned from captured al Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The DIA report suggested that al-Libi had been "intentionally misleading" his interrogators. The DIA report also cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy: "Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.
2002 British intelligence report
In October 2002, a British Intelligence investigation of possible links between Iraq and al-Qaeda and the possibility of Iraqi WMD attacks issued a report concluding: "al Qaeda has shown interest in gaining chemical and biological expertise from Iraq, but we do not know whether any such training was provided. We have no intelligence of current cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda and do not believe that al Qaeda plans to conduct terrorist attacks under Iraqi direction.
2003 British intelligence report
In January 2003, British intelligence completed a classified report on Iraq that concluded that "there are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network." The report was leaked to the BBC, who published information about it on February 5, the same day Colin Powell addressed the United Nations. According to BBC, the report "says al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden views Iraq's ruling Ba'ath party as running contrary to his religion, calling it an 'apostate regime'. 'His aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq,' it says." The BBC reported that former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted that intelligence had shown that the Iraqi regime appeared to be allowing a permissive environment "in which al-Qaeda is able to operate...Certainly we have some evidence of links between al-Qaeda and various people in Iraq...What we don't know, and the prime minister and I have made it very clear, is the extent of those links...What we also know, however, is that the Iraqi regime have been up to their necks in the pursuit of terrorism generally.
2003 Israeli intelligence
In February 2003, Israeli intelligence sources told the Associated Press that no link has been conclusively established between Saddam and Al Qaeda. According to the AP story, "Boaz Ganor, an Israeli counter-terrorism expert, told the AP he knows of no Iraqi ties to terror groups, beyond Baghdad's relationship with Palestinian militias and possibly Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.... A senior Israeli security source told the AP that Israel has not yet found evidence of an Iraqi-Palestinian-Al Qaeda triangle, and that several investigations into possible Al Qaeda ties to Palestinian militias have so far not yielded substantial results. Ganor said Al Qaeda has put out feelers to Palestinian groups, but ties are at a very preliminary stage.
2004 Carnegie study
In January 2004, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace scholars Joseph Cirincione, Jessica Tuchman Mathews, and George Perkovich publish their study WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications, which looked into Saddam's relationship with al-Qaeda and concluded that "although there have been periodic meetings between Iraqi and Al Qaeda agents, and visits by Al Qaeda agents to Baghdad, the most intensive searching over the last two years has produced no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda." The study also found "some evidence that there were no operational links" between the two entities.
2004 CIA report
In August, the CIA finished another assessment of the question of Saddam's links to al-Qaeda. This assessment had been requested by the office of the Vice President, who asked specifically that the CIA take another look at the possibility that Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi constituted a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, as Colin Powell had claimed in his speech to the United Nations Security Council. The assessment concluded that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime harbored Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A U.S. official familiar with the new CIA assessment said intelligence analysts were unable to determine conclusively the nature of the relationship between al-Zarqawi and Saddam. "It's still being worked," he said. "It (the assessment) ... doesn't make clear-cut, bottom-line judgments" about whether Saddam's regime was aiding al-Zarqawi. The official told Knight Ridder "What is indisputable is that Zarqawi was operating out of Baghdad and was involved in a lot of bad activities," but that the report didn't conclude that Saddam's regime had provided "aid, comfort and succor" to al-Zarqawi. According to Knight Ridder, "Some officials believe that Saddam's secular regime kept an eye on al-Zarqawi, but didn't actively assist him." Knight Ridder reporters called the CIA study "the latest assessment that calls into question one of President Bush's key justifications for last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq
2005 update of CIA report
In October 2005, the CIA updated the 2004 report to conclude that Saddam's regime "did not have a relationship, harbor, or even turn a blind eye toward Mr. Zarqawi and his associates," according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (see 2006 report below).[89] Two counterterrorism analysts told Newsweek Saddam's government may never have known Zarqawi was in Iraq because Zarqawi used "false cover." An intelligence official also told Newsweek the current draft of the report says that "most evidence suggests Saddam Hussein did not provide Zarqawi safe haven before the war. It also recognizes that there are still unanswered questions and gaps in knowledge about the relationship." According to Newsweek, "The most recent CIA analysis is an update—based on fresh reporting from Iraq and interviews with former Saddam officials—of a classified report that analysts in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence first produced more than a year ago.
