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'Saddam not linked to al-Qaeda'
08/09/2006 19:48 - (SA)
Washington - There is no evidence confirming that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab and his al-Qaeda associates, according to a senate report on pre-war intelligence that Democrats say undercuts President George W Bush's justification for going to war.
The declassified document being released on Friday by the senate intelligence committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group, Iraqi National Congress, had in the march to war.
It discloses for the first time an October 2005, assessment by the central intelligence agency (CIA) that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, neither harbour, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates".
Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaeda. Zarqawi was killed by a US airstrike in June this year.
The long-awaited report, said senator Carl Levin, a member of the committee, is "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts" to link Saddam to al-Qaeda.
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