Perhaps you can believe it from The Herald, The Guardian, CNN, Salon, The Telegraph, The BBC, CBS, and The Washington Post:
http://www.archive-news.net/Articles/SH040923.pdf
2001 Presidential Daily Briefing
Ten days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, President Bush receives a classified Presidential Daily Briefing (that had been prepared at his request) indicating that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11th attacks and that there was "
scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda."
2002 DIA reports
The DIA report also cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy: "
Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."[78] In April 2002, the DIA assessed that "there was no credible reporting on al-Qa'ida training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq
2002 British intelligence report
In October 2002, a British Intelligence investigation of possible links between Iraq and al-Qaeda and the possibility of Iraqi WMD attacks issued a report concluding: "al Qaeda has shown interest in gaining chemical and biological expertise from Iraq, but we do not know whether any such training was provided.
We have no intelligence of current cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda and do not believe that al Qaeda plans to conduct terrorist attacks under Iraqi direction
2003 CIA report
In January 2003, the CIA released a special Report to Congress entitled Iraqi Support for Terrorism. The report concludes that "In contrast to the patron-client pattern between Iraq and its Palestinian surrogates,
the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida appears to more closely resemble that of two independent actors trying to exploit each other — their mutual suspicion suborned by al-Qaida's interest in Iraqi assistance, and Baghdad's interest in al-Qaida's anti-U.S. attacks…. The Intelligence Community has no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaida strike." (See below).[81]
In January 2003, British intelligence completed a classified report on Iraq that concluded that "
there are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network." The report was leaked to the BBC, who published information about it on February 5, the same day Colin Powell addressed the United Nations. According to BBC, the report "says al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden views Iraq's ruling Ba'ath party as running contrary to his religion, calling it an 'apostate regime'. 'His aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq,' it says."
2003 Israeli intelligence
In February 2003, Israeli intelligence sources told the Associated Press that
no link has been conclusively established between Saddam and Al Qaeda.
2004 9/11 Commission Report
The official report issued by the 9/11 Commission in July 2004 addressed the issue of a possible conspiracy between the government of Iraq and al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks. The report addressed specific allegations of contacts between al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government and
concluded that there was no evidence that such contacts developed into a collaborative operational relationship, and that they did not cooperate to commit terrorist attacks against the United States. The report includes the following information:
“Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda—save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against "Crusaders" during the Gulf War of 1991.
Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army. To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad’s control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin’s help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.
Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request. As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.
There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response.
2004 Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq
In Section 12 of the report, titled Iraq's Links to Terrorism, the Senate committee examined the CIA's "five primary finished intelligence products on Iraq’s links to terrorism." The report focused specifically on the CIA's 2003 study. After examining all the intelligence, the
Senate committee concluded that the CIA had accurately assessed that contacts between Saddam Hussein's regime and members of al-Qaeda "did not add up to an established formal relationship."
2004 CIA report
In August, the CIA finished another assessment of the question of Saddam's links to al-Qaeda. This assessment had been requested by the office of the Vice President, who asked specifically that the CIA take another look at the possibility that Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi constituted a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, as Colin Powell had claimed in his speech to the United Nations Security Council.
The assessment concluded that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime harbored Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
2005 update of CIA report
In October 2005, the CIA updated the 2004 report to conclude that
Saddam's regime "did not have a relationship, harbor, or even turn a blind eye toward Mr. Zarqawi and his associates," according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (see 2006 report below).[91]
2006 Pentagon study
In February 2006, the Pentagon published a study of the so-called Harmony database documents captured in Afghanistan.[93] While the study did not look specifically at allegations of Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda, it did analyze papers that offer insight into the history of the movement and tensions among the leadership. In particular, it found evidence that
al-Qaeda jihadists had viewed Saddam as an "infidel" and cautioned against working with him.
2006 Senate Report of Pre-War Intelligence
In September 2006, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released two reports constituting Phase II of its study of pre-war intelligence claims regarding Iraq's pursuit of WMD and alleged links to al-Qaeda. These bipartisan reports included "Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments"[97] and "The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress".[98] The reports concluded that, according to David Stout of the New York Times, "
there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had prewar ties to Al Qaeda and one of the terror organization’s most notorious members, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."[99] The "Postwar Findings" volume of the study concluded that there was
no evidence of any Iraqi support of al-Qaeda, al-Zarqawi, or Ansar al-Islam. The "Iraqi National Congress" volume concluded that "false information" from INC-affiliated sources was used to justify key claims in the prewar intelligence debate and that this information was "widely distributed in intelligence products" prior to the war.
The "Postwar Findings" report had the following conclusions about Saddam's alleged links to al-Qaeda:
Conclusion 1: The
CIA's assessment that Iraq and al-Qaeda were "two independent actors trying to exploit each other" was accurate
only about al-Qaeda. "Postwar findings indicate that
Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qa'ida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qa'ida to provide material or operational support."
Conclusion 2:
Postwar findings have indicated that there was only one meeting between representatives of Saddam Hussein and representatives of al-Qaeda. These findings also identified two occasions "not reported prior to the war, in which
Saddam Hussein rebuffed meeting requests from an al-Qa'ida operative. The Intelligence Community has not found any other evidence of meetings between al-Qa'ida and Iraq."
Conclusion 4: "
Postwar findings support the April 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that there was no credible reporting on al-Qa'ida training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq.
There have been no credible reports since the war that Iraq trained al-Qa'ida operatives at Salman Pak to conduct or support transnational terrorist operations."
Conclusion 6:
Prewar interactions between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda affiliate group Ansar al-Islam were attempts by Saddam to spy on the group rather than to support or work with them. "Postwar information reveals that
Baghdad viewed Ansar al-Islam as a threat to the regime and that the IIS attempted to collect intelligence on the group."
Conclusion 7: "Postwar information supports prewar Intelligence Community assessments that there was
no credible information that Iraq was complicit in or had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks or any other al-Qa'ida strike.....
Conclusion 8:
"No postwar information indicates that Iraq intended to use al-Qa'ida or any other terrorist group to strike the United States homeland before or during Operation Iraqi Freedom."
2007 Pentagon Inspector General Report
In February 2007, the Pentagon's inspector general issued a report that concluded that Feith's Office of Special Plans,
an office in the Pentagon run by Douglas Feith that was the source of most of the misleading intelligence on al-Qaeda and Iraq, had "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsisent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers." The report found that these actions were "inappropriate" though not "illegal." [/I]
Despite repeated warnings, the personal attacks continue. Stick a fork in this thread, it's done.