The Presidential Assasination Attempt That Didn’t Bark

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McClatchy:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

What the article doesn’t mention is that they apparently also found no evidence that Saddam’s regime attempted to kill George H.W. Bush in Kuwait in 1993. We can know this because we can be certain if they had found it, the administration would have let us know loudly and often. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has there been any such evidence found by anyone else since the invasion.

Meanwhile, all of official Washington has become discreetly mum about this, even though it was spoken of constantly from fall, 2002 through spring, 2003 as part of the case for war. More and more it appears Seymour Hersh was correct back in 1993, and it was all a sham.

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Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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