Threat assessment, based on captured enemy documents is done at three levels:
Tactical
Operational
Strategic
We're talking about a Pentagon report regarding captured Iraqi documents. The methodology used to dissect said documents requires categorization, addressing each level, in turn.
"no direct operational link" means no links at a level which would provide warfare at that level.
There's nothing hard about this. Y'all can quibble with what I'm saying all you want though. That's fine.