ADMINISTRATION — PENTAGON REPORT CONFIRMS NO SADDAM LINK TO AL QAEDA: McClatchy reports that an “exhaustive” Pentagon-sponsored review of “more than 600,000 Iraqi documents” captured after the 2003 invasion “has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.” The full report, set to be released tomorrow, “was essentially completed last year and has been undergoing what one U.S. intelligence official described as a ‘painful’ declassification review.” In September 2002, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that American intelligence had “bulletproof” evidence of links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Earlier that same week, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice asserted that “there are some Al Qaeda personnel who found refuge in Baghdad.” In fact, the Defense Department reported last April that interrogations of deposed Iraqi leaders showed that Hussein’s government “did not cooperate” with al Qaeda. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s September 2006 report revealed a 2005 CIA assessment declaring that prior to the war Saddam’s government “did not have a relations, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward” al Qaeda leader Abu Musam al-Zarqawi and his associates.

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Today’s headline in The Greenville News read “Senator: Trooper ills run deeper than video” referring to the recent forced resignations of Jim Schweitzer, Director of the SC Department of Public Safety and Russell Roark, the commander of the Highway Patrol. Both men resigned after a damning video came to light which showed a state trooper threatening to kill a black suspect that had been pulled over during a traffic stop, the trooper also used the “n” word and off camera appeared to beat the suspect, even after he had been subdued. Governor Sanford expressed shock at these revelations even though members of the SC Legislative Black Caucus had warned him for months that racism and abuse was rampant in the Highway Patrol under the direct supervision of Roark and Schweitzer. After his resignation Schweitzer was defiant, blaming his ouster on “politics at its worst.”

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ENERGY — RECORD OIL PRICES HELP FUEL ECONOMIC DOWNTURN: Yesterday, crude oil reached $102 a barrel, a record high, as trading was spurred by “jitters before OPEC’s crude production meeting next week.” Those high prices are reaching consumers at the pump, where gasoline “could approach $4 a gallon by spring.” “The effect of high oil prices today could be the difference between having a recession and not having a recession,” said Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff. Americans face skyrocketing prices at the pump even as oil companies such as ExxonMobil reaped record profits last year. The House is expected to vote on a renewable tax package — perhaps as early as today — that would “eliminate roughly $18 billion” in tax breaks for Big Oil “and use the savings to fund tax credits and other incentives for renewable energy.” In December, conservatives stripped a similar tax package from the 2007 energy bill after Bush threatened a veto.

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