Saddam's Files Provide No 'Smoking Gun'

Iraqi docs cast doubt on al-Qaeda link and Bush, Sr. murder plot
By Caroline Zimmerman,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 23, 2008 5:20 PM CDT
Saddam's Files Provide No 'Smoking Gun'
President Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush wave from a boat in this file photo. Armchair psychologists chalk up the Iraq invasion to President Bush's feelings of personal revenge for Iraq's alleged assasination attempt on his father.    (Getty Images)

The Pentagon has rifled through 600,000 pages of Iraqi intelligence docs and found no sign of:

  • a plot to kill George Bush, Sr. in 1993.
  • a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda link.
  • a connection between Baghdad and Abdul Rahman Yasin, an alleged Sept. 11 plotter.
In fact, Hussein and his ministers are recorded on tape asking whether Washington or "Zionists" had planned World Trade Center attack.

President Bush turned heads in 2002 when he said of Hussein, "After all, this is a guy who tried to kill my dad at one time." Analysts are debating why the Bush, Sr. plot is not recorded in Iraqi files that detail other killings and ties to Egyptian and Palestinian terror groups. Iraq may have destroyed the paper trail, one CIA analyst said: the alleged murder attempt "was an utter embarrassment for them." (More Saddam Hussein stories.)

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