Download Your Very Own...

...Redacted Institute for Defense Analyses Report once and for all exploding the al Qaeda->Saddam Hussein link that our government doesn't want you see here.

The Bush Administration has added a diabolical new info suppressing mechanism to their already overloaded arsenal: Snail Mail only!

Via ABC News:

The Bush Administration apparently does not want a U.S. Military Study that found no direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda to get any attention. This morning, the Pentagon canceled 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."
(emphasis added)

So exactly how long will it take a request to Joint Forces Command to receive, process and post a report the Commander-in-Chief doesn't want us to see? I've seen how long it takes for MRAPs to be ordered. Plus it's not like the military loses things unless you count $12 billion shrink-wrapped and stacked on pallets (you can't tell me the military was not involved in moving that quantity so quickly) or thousands of guns, $1 billion in equipment, etc. The US Postal Service loses millions of pieces of mail each year. And if the mail I received yesterday is any indication, the USPS cracks a few CDs too.

ABC News on the report's methodology:

The report is based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion. It is also based on thousands of hours of interrogations of former top officials in Saddam's government who are now in U.S. custody.

I saved the best for last -- the key graph on conclusion and implications:

Others have reached the same conclusion, but no previous study has had access to so much information. Further, this is the first official acknowledgement from the U.S. military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda.

Now that is big.

AF

(h/t TPM Muckraker)

Update: McClatchy pieces on the study here and its canceled release there.