A broad study by the Pentagon, published in secret and put on line by the American chain ABC, confirms the absence of direct link between the former Iraqi President and the Al-Qaeda network, which the Bush administration put forward to justify the invasion of Iraq. Five years after the start of the war in Iraq, this study, based on the analysis of 600,000 official Iraqi documents and thousands of hours of interrogation of former collaborators of Saddam Hussein, indicates that it "found no direct tie between Al-Qaeda and Saddam’s Iraq".

The report explains that the regime of Saddam Hussein didn’t have clear ties with Al-Qaeda, but was in touch with other terrorist groups, notably Palestinian. The regime "often cooperated directly, though cautiously, with terrorist groups, when the people in charge thought that these groups could serve the long term interests of Iraq," write the authors. "The regime carefully documented its contacts with Palestinian terrorist organizations in numerous government memos", of which one, for example, was entitled: "Iraqi financial aid to families of suicide bombers in the Gaza Strip and Transjordan", added the report.

The American armed forces limited the distribution of this study, available only on request and delivered by courier, instead of broadcast on the Internet or furnished to all the press. The Pentagon spokesman, Geoff Morrell, indicated that he didn’t know why the military had decided not to make the report available online, but denied that it was part of an effort to limit distribution.

Other reports, published by the Commission of Inquiry into September 11 or even by the Pentagon’s Inspector General in 2007, had arrived at the same conclusion, but no previous study has had access to as much information. According to the summary of the new study by the Pentagon, to which ABC offers a link, Saddam Hussein supported terrorist groups and "state terror had become a routine tool of maintaining power", but "the special targets of this state terror were Iraqi citizens".

(March 15, 2008, Le Monde with AFP)

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