Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda

ABC News reported ABC News has requested and obtained a copy of the Pentagon study which shows Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaeda. It's government report the White House didn't want you to read: yesterday the Pentagon canceled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's availability and didn't make the report available via email or online. Based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion and thousands of hours of interrogations of former officials in Saddam's government now in US custody, the government report is the first official acknowledgment from the US military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to al Qaeda.

And yet Ed Morrissey says Saddam supported at least two al-Qaeda groups: Pentagon, Andy McCarthy says CONNECTED: Iraq and al Qaeda , Stephen F. Hayes says How, then, to explain this sentence about Iraq and al Qaeda from the report's abstract: "At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust"? And how to explain the "considerable overlap" between their activities which led not only to the appearances of ties but to a "de facto link between the organizations?" and goes on to cite other indications in the report.