The Conflicting News of Iraq - Al Qaeda Links

The Merry-go-Round. That guy said that, this guy said this ...

On March 13, the Pentagon released a detailed study (pdf) confirming “no direct link between late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Al-Qaeda network.” But oddly, numerous conservatives and Iraq war supporters — including the Wall Street Journal — have cited the report as vindication of their theories about a Saddam Hussein-al Qaeda alliance. Today, the Washington Times joined the conservative echo chamber and even criticized “the mainstream media” for “badly misreport[ing]” the report’s conclusion:

Newly declassified documents captured in Iraq show that Saddam Hussein’s regime had extensive ties with a variety of Islamist and other terrorist groups, in some cases dating back to the early 1990s. Saddam’s Iraqi Intelligence Service (or Mukhabarat) established a working relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, later merged the group with al Qaeda, according to a new report by the Institute for Defense Analyses.

Few stories in recent memory have been as badly misreported by the mainstream media. News outlets — including The Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and ABC —all issued reports earlier this month declaring that the IDA report showed no link between Saddam and al Qaeda.