The latest Iraq Perspectives Project report sponsored by a Department of Defense agency has caused considerable interest in the mainstream media. However, this interest has shown yet another weakness in their journalistic systems. Apparently their proof reading is not very good as they consistently added a negative into the headlines, when they surely meant the opposite. How else does one explain the headlines covering a report which starts with the following sentence: “The Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism.”

The actual report goes on to detail that, despite having examined only 15% of the documents (although they also examined all of the English document titles), they found solid links to al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda spokesman and Imam Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman’s Islamic Group, al-Qaeda’s Bahranian arm known as the Army of Mohammed, the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan which was the forerunner of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who was a key ally of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the Abu Sayyaf group, another al-Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines. In particular, on page 42 of the report they acknowledge that “Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives. 97″ 

For some unfathomable reason the authors of the report decided to use the phrase “no smoking gun” to describe the above multiple connections between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaeda. They further made no comment on the possibility of further evidence still to be uncovered in the remaining 85% of the documentation (plus further documentation not available to them due to being “under the control of other US government agencies”—presumably including intelligence agencies whose primary focus is on al-Qaeda and who may have had “first pick” at any such evidence). 

It is unfathomable how they arrived at the “no smoking gun” remark in the second paragraph of their executive summary following the opening sentence (shown above). It is even harder to understand when their conclusion begins: “One question remains regarding Iraq’s terrorism capability: Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against United States? Judging from examples of Saddam’s statements (Extract 34) before the 1991 Gulf War with the United States, the answer is yes. 

It would seem highly probable that the discovery of 6 solid Iraq/al-Qaeda links in about 90,000 of the documents would indicate the very high probability of finding even more associations, possibly even the “smoking gun”, in the remaining 510,000. Add in resources, not available to the authors, that are currently in the hands of other government agencies, including captured documentation from other sources, and any analyst worthy of the title would conclude that this report affirms the contention that Saddam Hussein supported al-Qaeda. The gun may not be smoking, but it is still warm from a recent firing and was found in Saddam’s hand with Osama’s fingerprints all over it. 

In the light of all this evidence, the mainstream media headlines from:

· ABC (“Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda”)

· CNN (“Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda not linked, Pentagon says” – this one is even more disingenuous than most as the report clearly states “This paper does not necessarily reflect the views of IDA [Institute for Defense Analyses] or the sponsors of JAWP [Joint Advanced Warfighting Program]” under whose auspices this paper was produced)

· The NY Times (“Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie”) and

· AFP [Agence France Presse] (“No link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda: Pentagon study”) 

are either egregious, wrong (presumably due to those proof readers I mentioned at the beginning) or stupid (it is always possible these publications employ journalists and editors who can’t actually read English)!    

 

Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.

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