Still think Saddam had no links to Al-Qaeda?

Guess again. Stephen F. Hayes has come up with a block buster of a story linking Saddam and Al-Qaeda in this piece from the Weekly Standard. In it they detail how Iraqi security forces helped train approximately 2000 terrorists over a period of four years, at three different camps. That's approximately 8000 terrorists that were trained during Saddam's reign that we know of, folks. This is based on information from unclassified documents that the government has translated - about 50,000 out of roughly 2 million documents, videos, and other types of media - that they are currently discussing releasing to the general public.

Many in the so-called "Mainstream Media" were quick to seize on the carefully worded summary statement issued by the 9/11 commission, that said in part, that the commission had found no evidence "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States" and ran blaring headlines like the one on the June 17, 2004, front page of the New York Times: "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie."

However, Mr. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn in this other article state that "this was woefully imprecise. It assumed, not unreasonably, that the 9/11 Commission's conclusion was based on a firm foundation of intelligence reporting, that the intelligence community had the type of human intelligence and other reporting that would allow senior-level analysts to draw reasonable conclusions. We know now that was not the case." [Emphasis mine. GW]

Still think Saddam had no links to Al-Qaeda?