The Scotsman : Saddam 'saw al-Qaida as a threat', says US Senate report

Saddam 'saw al-Qaida as a threat', says US Senate report

September 9, 2006

SADDAM HUSSEIN rejected overtures from al-Qaida and believed Islamic extremists were a threat to his regime, a reverse portrait of the Iraq allied with Osama bin Laden painted by the Bush White House, a Senate panel has found.

The administration's version was based in part on intelligence that White House officials knew was flawed, according to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing newly declassified documents released by the panel.

Yesterday's report discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that, prior to the war, Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbour or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

Yet as recently as an August 21 news conference, President Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with Zarqawi".