One of the most persistent falsehoods that Americans continue to believe regarding Iraq is the idea that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11, or that he had links with al Qaeda. This idea has been thoroughly discounted on many occasions and it’s been discounted again:
An examination of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents, audio and video records collected by U.S. forces since the March 2003 invasion has concluded that there is “no smoking gun” supporting the Bush administration’s prewar assertion of an “operational relationship” between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist network, sources familiar with the study said.
The review, conducted for the military’s Joint Forces Command by the Alexandria-based Institute for Defense Analyses, is the first to examine Hussein’s ties to terrorist groups based only on Iraqi sources.
(…)
An alleged al-Qaeda-Hussein link was key to the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld all referred to evidence of ties to the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In his speech to the United Nations in February 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell outlined a “sinister nexus” between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Much of the U.S. intelligence behind those conclusions has been retracted.
Funny how it takes five years for the truth to come out.
