The Media Mess Strikes Again

You might have caught a news report or two earlier in the week that the Pentagon released a report finding no operational links between Iraq and al Qaeda (that is, when it wasn't being buried by the Spitzer mess).

Well, it figures that the media got the reporting wrong. The actual report provides a slightly different take on that. Let's call it a nuanced media report, because while no smoking gun of active Iraqi officials working in tandem with al Qaeda, there was plenty of other funny business going on.

Indeed, Iraq was a nexus of funding international terror groups including a couple you might not immediately recognize, but you might recognize the name of the jihadis who spewed forth from them. From page 67 of the report:

Saddam's interest in, and support for, non-Iraqi non-state actors was spread across a wide variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. For years, Saddam maintained training camps for foreign "fighters" drawn from these diverse groups. In some cases, particularly for Palestinians, Saddam was also a strong financial supporter. Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives. 97

No links to al Qaeda? There's also this from the footnotes:

Many of the early members of al Qaeda were Egyptian extremist veterans of alJihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad), including the organization's "number two" man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Front,
Renewal and Jihad (Hamas), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(PLFP) are all listed as designated foreign terrorist organizations by the US State
Department. (www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/37l9l.htm)

Well, he was busy funding all the ancillary terror groups that spawned jihadis that made up al Qaeda. Saddam was lubricating the terror business by funding terror groups across the region, and included groups that were and are aligned with al Qaeda.

That's a wee bit different than those earlier media reports saying no links. Saddam might not have controlled al Qaeda, but he certainly had no problem financing the groups that spawned al Qaeda and its leaders, not to mention other international terrorist groups that are on the State Department terror lists.

Also taking a closer look at what the report actually says: Weekly Standard.

UPDATE:
Gateway Pundit fires away at the media and then fires for effect, providing photographic and other evidence showing that Iraq was up to its eyeballs in links with terrorists including al Qaeda, and the media's claims otherwise are laughable.