“Saddam and Terrorism” report now online

KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images The Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy recently made available “Saddam and Terrorism,” a Pentagon-requested report conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses. The five-volume report analyzes captured Iraqi documents for connections between Saddam and terrorist organizations. The document was declassified earlier this month, but was made available only in ...

595832_080321_saddam2.jpg
595832_080321_saddam2.jpg

KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images

KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images

The Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy recently made available “Saddam and Terrorism,” a Pentagon-requested report conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses. The five-volume report analyzes captured Iraqi documents for connections between Saddam and terrorist organizations.

The document was declassified earlier this month, but was made available only in CD form.

 

According to FAS:

The five-volume report affirmed that there was “no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.” But it also said there was “strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism.”

In light of the report’s mixed findings, Warren Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers writes:

The new study appears destined to be used by both critics and supporters of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq to advance their own familiar arguments.

Three of the report’s five volumes consist of hundreds of pages of the translated Iraqi documents. For those of you not up to the challenge, FAS has pulled out the highlights, which include this peculiar gem:

One of them, a fifty-page Iraqi “intelligence” analysis, disparages the austerely conservative Wahhabi school of Islam by claiming that its eighteenth century founder, Ibn ‘Abd al Wahhab, had ancestors who were Jews. In what must be the only laugh-out-loud line in the generally dismal five-volume report, the Iraqi analysis states that Ibn ‘Abd al Wahhab’s grandfather’s true name was not “Sulayman” but “Shulman.”

“Tawran confirms that Sulayman, the grandfather of the sheikh, is (Shulman); he is Jew from the merchants of the city of Burstah in Turkey, he had left it and settled in Damascus, grew his beard, and wore the Muslim turban, but was thrown out for being voodoo.”

Lucy Moore is a researcher at Foreign Policy.

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