Report On Saddam - Al Qaeda Non-Connection Buried

By Cernig

Remember Fester mentioned just yesterday a new Pentagon report that, after a review of 600,000 pages of documents, concluded there was no meaningful connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda - contradicting the statements of Bush, Cheney, Rummie, Colin Powell and others?

Well, it's been buried.

This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release and will no longer make the report available online.

The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

It won't be emailed to reporters and it won't be posted online.

Asked why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed, the spokesman for Joint Forces Command said: "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."

Another Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive."

As long as this report isn't widely available, wingnuts can console themselves with their fevered dreams of Al Qaeda conspiring with Saddam, just as they keep recycling delusional fantasies about Saddam's WMDs being spirited away to Syria.

Steve Benen adds:

And if asked, I’m certain Dana Perino would insist, with a mostly straight face, that the White House never contacted the Pentagon about this, and it was solely the decision of military officials, who, for whatever reason, preferred to hide its own report.

And no one will believe her.

Except Bush and the loyal base, who have so much psychologically invested in believing all this claptrap that their world view might collapse like a house of cards if they ever looked outside their echo chamber.