That Saddam was connected to Al Qaeda is no longer in doubt. The only question is whether he was Bin Ladin's enabler, or whether he in fact pulled the trigger.
"That Saddam was connected to Al Qaeda is no longer in doubt. "
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The MSM and Democrats still don't admit it.
But while searching for that, I did find another very interesting article at FoxNews from 2004, which also didn't seem to have gotten much attention:
Possible Saddam-Al Qaeda Link Seen in U.N. Oil-for-Food Program
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132682,00.html
Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam's overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda (search) that continued after billions of Oil-for-Food dollars began pouring into Saddam's coffers and Usama bin Laden (search) declared his infamous war on the U.S.
Now, buried in some of the United Nation's own confidential documents, clues can be seen that underscore the possibility of just such a Saddam-Al Qaeda link — clues leading to a locked door in this Swiss lakeside resort. (To review a series of documents, audits and other stories related to Oil-for-Food, click here.)
Denying al-Qaida
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/michaelbarone/2006/03/06/188672.html
So why do these Democrats and these government professionals seem to have such a conviction that there must have been no collaboration between al-Qaida and Saddam? The Democrats fear that more Americans would support Bush and the war effort if they believed there was. The career professionals, with their many years of training in the subtleties of the Middle East, have developed a vested interest in the notion that religious Wahhabis like al-Qaida could never collaborate with a secular tyrant like Saddam. If alliances could be formed across religious lines, what use would all their learning be?
The Minnesota Democrats cite the 9-11 commission's report that it found no evidence of "operational" cooperation between al-Qaida and Iraq, although it did find evidence of many contacts. But, as Donald Rumsfeld likes to say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Neither al-Qaida nor Saddam operated under a Freedom of Information Act. Any collaboration between them on 9-11 would have been kept very secret -- al-Qaida did not want to leave a return address. We do not know that there was such collaboration. But we also do not know that there was not.