WTF Is It Now?!?

White House connecting of Saddam, al Qaeda poses another problem
More lies from the party of integrity and responsibility!

From the bushmoonie Times, of all places (thanks to GGM at the BC Forum for the link):

As pResident Bush works to quiet the growing tempest over his discredited claim of Iraqi uranium shopping in Africa, another of his prewar assertions is coming under fire: the purported link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al Qaeda network.

Before the war, Mr. Bush and members of his Cabinet said Saddam was harboring top al Qaeda operatives and suggested Iraq could slip the terrorist network chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons.

Critics attacked those assertions from the beginning for being counter to the ideologies of Saddam and the al Qaeda network and short on corroborative evidence. Now, two former Bush administration intelligence officials say the evidence linking Saddam to the group responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks was never more than sketchy at best.

"There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation," former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann said this week.

Intelligence agencies agreed on the "lack of a meaningful connection to al Qaeda" and said so to the White House and Congress, said Mr. Thielmann, who left State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research last September.

Another former Bush administration intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, agreed there was no clear link between Saddam and the al Qaeda network.