MORE LIES AND DISINFORMATION RELEASED IN EFFORT TO PROVE LINKS BETWEEN SADDAM AND AL QAEDA

It’s taken over three years but it seems the US has now completed the production of the elaborate forgeries that will be used to attempt to prove to the world once and for all that Saddam Hussein really did have links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Murdoch correspondent Sarah Baxter of Britain’s Sunday Times reports in today’s The Australian that the US Director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has been directed by President George W. Bush to release “…the contents of 48,000 boxes of untranslated papers and tapes relating to the workings of Saddam Hussein's regime.” Among the documents, so we are told, are “…tantalising clues to possible Iraqi contacts with al-Qa'ida.” Baxter goes on to report that among the documents is an “…Iraqi intelligence report dated September 15, 2001 -- four days after the attacks on the US – [that] says Osama bin Laden and the Taliban were in contact with Iraq, and al-Qa'ida members had visited the country.” Baxter, however, does go on to mention that much of the sources for these documents are “questionable”.

Desperate stuff from a desperate President and, of course, there will be the Liar Lovers and Bush, Blair and Howard Huggers around the world that will seize on the documents to justify their arguments about the invasion, occupation and plundering of Iraq despite their dwindling numbers. It’ll be interesting to see how the neoconservative commentators react to the news of the documents release; they’ll be looking for anything at the moment that is likely to save them a bit of face – especially since Francis Fukuyama, one of their high profile intellectual leaders, has defected from their cause.

Personally, I don’t think this story has anything going for it. It’s too little and too late as far as Bush and his cronies are concerned – the world simply doesn’t believe the administration anymore no matter what they come up with. They’ve simply cried ‘Wolf’ far too many times already.