The media report the Senate says there was no connection between UBL/Al Qaeda and Saddam for 9/ll. They’re right. There’s still not enough evidence to suggest they colluded for 9/ll.
But we knew this. Why did the Senate Democratic “leadership” and their hand maidens in the media choose to trumpet this “story”? After hearing about the clear connections a 9/ll commissioner was shocked here. And why didn’t the Senate/Media include other connections besides training camps? Read Tom Joscelyn’s reaction/response here and find out what was left on the cutting room floor. Read his latest piece in the Weekly Standard. And what about these connections? Why did the Clinton administration allege an allegiance between the two when it indicted UBL in 1997-8 (which did a whole lot of good, didn’t it?) And what about these connections? And these? (here’s a nay sayers site here. Note the cogent ‘arguments.’) Here’s the one about the mother of all connections.
We DO know however there were plenty of connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq for years before our invasion.
From the LA Times:
The 356-page report is certain to fuel the election-season debate over the administration’s foreign policy at a time when Bush is seeking to shore up support for the war in Iraq through a series of speeches that cast the conflict as central to winning the larger war on terrorism.
Bush on Thursday again asserted that the battle in Iraq was inextricably linked to Al Qaeda, and disparaged those who considered it a “diversion” from the war on terrorism.
White House spokesman Tony Snow on Friday downplayed the significance of the report, describing it as “nothing new.”
“It’s … kind of relitigating things that happened three years ago,” Snow said. “In 2002 and 2003, members of both parties got a good look at the intelligence we had, and they came to the very same conclusions about what was going on.”
The report’s publication was marked by intense political wrangling within the Republican-controlled Intelligence Committee, with two GOP members — Sens. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — breaking ranks to vote in favor of conclusions drafted by Democrats.