As if we didn't know

The lead is important, but in fact it understates what is in the body of the story. From AP for Wednesday:

Washington - Bluntly contradicting the Bush administration, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported Wednesday there was "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaida target the United States.

But, in fact, the text of the article goes well beyond just 9/11.

The Iraq connection long suggested by administration officials gained no currency in the report.

"Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded," the report said. "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred" after bin Laden moved his operations to Afghanistan in 1996, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," it said.

"Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaida and Iraq," the report said.

In other words, they may have occasionally talked to each other but they did not work together. The whole "al-Qaeda-Saddam link" business was a lie. Not that we didn't already know it but this makes it, well, "official."

This comes just two days after The Big Dick Cheney repeated the lie.

"He was a patron of terrorism," Cheney said of Hussein during a speech before The James Madison Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Florida. "He had long established ties with al Qaeda."

But of course he didn't, and the White House knew it. (Tellingly, AP notes that Cheney "offered no details backing up his claim of a link between Saddam and al Qaida.") This wasn't a case of misinterpreting intelligence, this wasn't even a case of cherry-picking intelligence. This was a case of outright whoppers, murderous lies whose effects are still being seen every day in the street and roads of Iraq.

They are a disgrace to their offices. The bunch of them.

Footnote: Actually, there's more. According to the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, there was someone who was cozy with bin Laden: our great ally in the war against terrorism, Pakistan.

The report also said that Pakistan broke with Afghanistan's Taliban regime only after September 11, even though it knew the Taliban was hiding bin Laden.

"The Taliban's ability to provide bin Laden a haven in the face of international pressure and UN sanctions was significantly facilitated by Pakistani support," the report said.

"Pakistan benefited from the Taliban-al-Qaeda relationship, as bin Laden's camps trained and equipped fighters for Pakistan's ongoing struggle with India over Kashmir."

That tidbit doesn't seem to have made it into a lot of domestic coverage.