Redstate

The Weekly Standard makes a very compelling case here. Do you think that this is breaking news that we can expect to see corroborated by other outlets or that the Standard will be alone in publishing this? I'd like to see the piece get further exposure.

I've enjoyed pulling out Andrew McCarthy's article at NROnline when the lefties throw out the "known fact" card.  

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200506290912.asp

The real known fact that McCarthy was the lead prosecutor in the 1993 WTC bombing trial really serves as a nice trump card against the hard left protestations about NRO being a right-wing rag.  It's kinda nice being able to say, "Really?  This guy should be your poster child for your 'prosecution over war' mantra".

"We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden's longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members 'with open arms' before the war, that they 'entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation...'"

The question we all must ask is this (and it is difficult, because few readers can comprehend an individual such as Saddam Hussein): Would Saddam have invited named terrorists into Iraq if America was not seen as such a threat?

The National Review of course says: "And not just because every jihadist with an AK-47 and a prayer rug has made his way there since we invaded. No, it's because Saddam made Iraq their cozy place to land long before that. They are fighting effectively there because they've been invited to dig in for years." But I believe the NR is just as problematic as the NYT in terms of turning its editorial pages into extreme demagoguery.

If members of al-Qaeda were in Iraq pre-Operation Iraqi Freedom, we most likely would have heard news reports of the group attacking Kurdish minorities. But as I recall, actual government troops engaged in such terrorism.

The fact of the matter is this: Iraq is not becoming a safer area. Bush can now say to the country, without lying, that America is becoming more secure because of our troop presence in Iraq. There are more terrorists there now then there were when we invaded the country. Hence, through the unfortunate miscalculation of senior war planners, there are now 9/11-Iraq ties. But there were none before the war. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

has never, to my knowledge, been controversial or questioned; in fact, it's often pointed out to criticize the missed opportunity to take him out, pre-invasion. It's usually been asserted that he operated in a region outside of Saddam's control, so some evidence linking him officially to Saddam before the start of the war, beyond "he was in Iraq," would be interesting.

As to the rest of it: there is food for thought in the article, to be sure. I would agree that anyone who says there was "no connection whatsoever" between Iraq and al-Qaeda is clearly wrong. What the nature of that connection was is much less clear; it seems to be mostly a series of nebulous meetings and overtures between various underlings. It might be interesting to do a similar study for, say, Sudan or Pakistan.

I also thought the article was clearly argumentative rather than informational, to the point where I found myself questioning the conclusions reached by the author. To take just one example:

There could hardly be a clearer case--of the ongoing revelations and the ongoing denial--than in the 13 points below, reproduced verbatim from a "Summary of Evidence" prepared by the U.S. government in November 2004. This unclassified document was released by the Pentagon in late March 2005. It details the case for designating an Iraqi member of al Qaeda, currently detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an "enemy combatant."

1. From 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades.

2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994.
   
   
3. The detainee admitted he was a member of the Taliban.
   
   
4. The detainee pledged allegiance to the supreme leader of the Taliban to help them take over all of Afghanistan.
   
   
5. The Taliban issued the detainee a Kalishnikov rifle in November 2000.
   
   
6. The detainee worked in a Taliban ammo and arms storage arsenal in Mazar-Es-Sharif organizing weapons and ammunition.
   
   
7. The detainee willingly associated with al Qaida members.
   
   
8. The detainee was a member of al Qaida.
   
   
9. An assistant to Usama Bin Ladin paid the detainee on three separate occasions between 1995 and 1997.
   
   
10. The detainee stayed at the al Farouq camp in Darwanta, Afghanistan, where he received 1,000 Rupees to continue his travels.
    
    
11. From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
    
    
12. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars.
    
    
13. Detainee was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Khudzar, Pakistan, in July 2002.
    

[...]after briefly describing the documents, the AP article downplayed its own scoop with a sentence almost as amusing as it is inane: "There is no indication the Iraqi's alleged terror-related activities were on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, other than the brief mention of him traveling to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi intelligence."

It seems to me hardly stunning that among al-Qaeda's ranks there was at least one person who used to be in the Iraqi military. And I find the sentence from the AP article to be entirely accurate and fair, so the description of it as "amusing" and "inane" makes me a little distrustful of the author.

However, I will be following this story with interest, and it's certainly given me more to think about.

Looking for operational links between Ba'athists and AQ is a waste of time.  There isn't going to be a memo from Saddam's palace saying 'give OBL anything he needs or your family gets piano wire dancing lessons'.

There doesn't have to be a memo.  Is there a memo at work about bringing donuts to work from time to time?  No. Somebody does it one day, and somebody else does it another day.  The idea is common enough that it doesn't have to be made explicit.

Saddam Hussein was paying stipends to wanted terrorists, providing them with work space and living space, as well as paying huge honoraria to the survivors of the family of suicide bombers, and shooting at USAF and RAF aircraft which were on UN missions.  Osama bin-Laden was openly at war with the US.  Hussein's underlings would have no doubts about providing anything they could to further AQ without costing the Iraq terror machine anything important.  AQ's 'staff' would have no doubts about which country's leadership was most likely to enable them to continue their program against the US.  How many other countries were actively shooting at the AirForce?

there are now 9/11-Iraq ties. But there were none before the war.

I'll let Christopher Hitchens answer for me. He easily did a masterful Ginsu Knife demonstration on Ron Reagan the Lessor who posited the same Known Fact:

Now, you even said, extraordinarily to me, that there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003. Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal? ...

Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad? The man who pushed Leon Klinghoffer off the boat, was sheltered by Saddam Hussein. The man who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, and you have the nerve to say that terrorism is caused by resisting it? And by deposing governments that endorse it? ...

When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do? ...

What they did say was they didn't know of any actual operational connection......which was the Iraqi Baath Party and...excuse me...and Al Qaeda. A direct operational connection. Now, that's because they don't know. They don't say there isn't one. They say they couldn't find one. But I just gave you the number, I would have thought, rather suggestive examples.

The fact of the matter is this:

It is a shame that so many people who use that phrase are engaged in polemic instead of fact delivery. Were the phrase itself conscious, it would surely scream.

You appear to have taken a single datum among many, tried your best to refute it, then drawn a sweeping conclusion dismissing the whole... apparently in the belief that there exist people so stupid that they would not notice your clumsy prestidigitation.

Bad assumption on your part. Do not try this again.

It wasn't just that he used to be Iraqi military, and then went to join Al-Qaeda, it is that he THEN returned to Iraq, and carried out operations under the command of bin Laden.

Sorry, I wasn't aware I was engaging in such polemic. Since many posters on RedState would disagree with the supposed bias of American media, I'll cite the ever-cited statement that Rumsfield, who would have an accurate perspective of the Iraqi situation, to the BBC. From the article: But asked if the security situation had improved, he admitted: "Statistically, no." As much as we independents/liberals believe in the incompetence of Rumsfield, I think he's actually right on this one.

Now you seek to drag the red herring of the number of foreign "insurgents" pouring into Iraq now across the original trail, which had to do with an article documenting connections between the Hussein regime and al-Qu'eda in the years prior to the invasion of Iraq.

To review the bidding, you attempted to debunk the entire article using conditions today, or just prior to the invasion, when that was not the subject of the article.

So now the inventory shows one load of polemic and one red herring. What else you got in that box?

This answer overlooks Sadam hosting the bomb maker of the 1993 World Trading Center bombing (who may have been an Iraqi agent).  It also ignores the documents calling bin Laden an Iraqi asset.

As for him responding to the US threat, lets think of an alternate world where after Sadam was pummelled in 1991 and then gave up his ambitions to lead arabic socialism.  What kind of threat would the US have been if he had used Oil-for-Food to feed his people instead of buying arms, building palaces and providing massive financial support to terrorism?  

The terrorists love the game of calling the response to their terrorism a provocation.

I thought Zarqawi did not join Al Queda until after the invasion.  Is there proof otherwise?

... the government of Iraq is complicit [1] in the 9/11 attacks? Specifically, are you saying that there was some program at IIS (or some other branch of government) that provided technical knowledge, money, personnel, or some other form of aid to the 9/11 plotters?

[1] I link to the definition just to make sure we're not quibbling over semantics.

Zarqawi ran a terrorist training camp near Herat, Afghanistan prior to Operation Enduring Freedom. That in itself proves he was either a "member" of al-Qaeda itself or one of its many satellite groups.

No one was allowed to run a camp in Afghanistan without the explicit permission of bin Laden himself. Zarqawi's [i]Tawhid-i-jihad[/i] organization was quite interconnected with al-Qaeda through that Herat camp.

Al-Qaeda isn't a centralized organization, it's almost like a franchise - and Zarqawi was a franchisee of al-Qaeda long before the war in Iraq.

The fact that Zarqawi did not pledge officially allegience to Al Queda until October 04 confuses the issue.

Is there any definite sources for this?  According to Wikipedia, he seems to be a near complete mystery with no confirmed sightings of him after 2001.

Zarqawi (opens in new window)

is the question whether there were links between Iraq and AQ, or is the question how the links between Iraq and AQ compared to the links between every other Middle Eastern country and AQ?

If the conclusion is that there is a far greater relationship between, let's say, certain factions in Saudi Arabia and AQ than there ever was between Iraq and AQ, doesn't that factor into the equation?

I daresay there are also "links" between AQ and the country where Porter Goss believes OBL is currently holed up.  I think by justifying Iraq based merely on the fact that some "links" existed, we are swatting down a liberal strawman without really explaining why Iraq was a bigger deal than other countries we might have gone after.

And if a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, THEN returns to the U.S. and carries out operations under the command of bin Laden, that doesn't mean the U.S. is working with al-Qaeda. Given the size of al-Qaeda, I'd be very surprised if they didn't have some Iraqi members. I'd be further surprised if those Iraqi members weren't sometimes used in Iraq, although it seems this particular gentleman got around quite a bit.

If the conclusion is that there is a far greater relationship between, let's say, certain factions in Saudi Arabia and AQ than there ever was between Iraq and AQ, doesn't that factor into the equation?

Absolutely. Now design a campaign to accomplish the removal of that factor. You have two constraints: 1) you cannot disrupt the flow of oil to the rest of the world while you proceed, and 2) you cannot send an army of infidels into Saudi Arabia without seriously freaking out a billion people.

we haven't been nearly as tough on Saudi Arabia from a diplomatic standpoint as we could have been, possibly for the reason that we can't be too choosy about who our friends are in the region.

I wouldn't advocate a military solution in Saudi Arabia, obviously, but it seems like there's a lot more we could do to put diplomatic pressure on them to stop harboring terrorists and, more importantly, to cut off funding to terrorist organizations.  I have no secret knowledge of what might go on behind the scenes, but I just haven't seen any tangible evidence that we're being tough about this in any way.  A shame, because we have no problem exerting diplomatic pressure on just about everyone else in the region.

nor what the President said. He said there were connections between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, not Saddam and 9/11.

We didn't know this before the war, and it was stated with no equivocation that Saddam had ties to al Qaeda.  

In my opinion, the evidence should have been on the table BEFORE we invaded.  We're paying the price for this error now.  Whether or not the evidence is there is no longer relevent because the meme that there were no WMDs and that Saddam had no Al-Qaeda ties is prevalent, is why we were not able to build a true coalition, is why the coalition we built is falling apart, and is why we cannot effectively recruit now.  You can't blame the media for this either, because it was the same media that was lax in the buildup to the war and ignored the fact that there was no evidence then and allowed the war to happen unchecked.  The media is just frigging lazy... they repeat anything someone with a title in government says.

Credit Bush for his cahones to go do what he thought was right, but he and his advisors are morons for not having their ducks in a row before initiating the invasion.  That's not leadership.  That's being ill-prepared.  

Remember that Bush had bipartisan support in the lead up to the war... that support evaporated when the reasons for going to war started looking a little fishy.  And IMO, they still look fishy, particularly in relation to other countries which more overtly supported the 9/11 attacks.  

But that's just me.  I could be wrong.

Playing devil's advocate, but couldn't Saddam have allowed Zarqawi in simply as a defense mechanism against the invasion?  Is that really supporting terrorism or trying to protect himself knowing that his military would fold like a map?

I wouldn't advocate a military solution in Saudi Arabia

I would. Duplicity is the name of the game there. What legitimacy the Saudi Royal Family has is provided by the Wahhabis. And they are the ones that have to be rooted out. So, I'm afraid the whole place is gonna have to be conquered by somebody else... Moslems, but not Wahhabis.

Say this for Saddam Hussein: he had one good idea in his life.

But that's just me. I could be wrong.

I think you are. Try constructing a plan to rid the world of the Wahhabis. Where do you start? What's the first thing you need? What's the second? Where could you get both, and do a Good Deed at the same time?

that Saddam wasn't in cahoots with Osama but your evidence to the contrary mostly revolves around the fact that there is no PROOF that he wasn't involved.  

It's hard to prove a negative.

... I am puzzled by your interpretation of the NYT editorial:

This, of course, was the justification the New York Times ... Doesn't he know that it's a Known Fact that there was no relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda?

But the NYT editorial says:

But we had hoped he would resist the temptation to raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks.

Clearly, NYT is talking about the Saddam and 9/11 link, not the Saddam and AQ link. The evidence you presented in your article has to do with (1) Saddam and Terrorism in general (Abu Nidal, Yassim, also payments to Hamas bombers' families), and (2) Saddam (specifically, IIS) and AQ (the Iraqi AQ member in Guantanomo). Nowhere is there anything about Saddam and 9/11. That is why I was uncertain what NYT has to do with this, and what your position on Saddam and 9/11 is.

Editorial screeched and hollered that Bush mentioned Iraq in the same speech as 9/11 - despite the fact that he clearly did not link the government of Iraq with the 9/11 attacks. What he said was that Iraq had ties with known terrorists, even Al-Qaeda ones, and that the lesson of 9/11 was that we had to strike them first.

Only a dolt or a willing shill for the Democrats would miss that distinction. The editorial staff of the NYT is both.

You say:

One of the most persistent Known Facts in the lexicon of Known Fact users is the Known Fact that Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaeda. None whatsoever. This, of course, was the justification the New York Times ... used for their shrieking denunciation of Bush's June 28th speech. How could he even mention Iraq and 9/11 in the same speech? Doesn't he know that it's a Known Fact that there was no relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda?

You are implying that the NYT says that there are no Saddam and AQ ties. That is not what is written in that editorial. The NYT is alledging (rightly or wrongly, that is a separate issue), that President Bush attempts to rhetorically link Saddam to 9/11 in his speeches. The NYT then asserts that there is no evidence for the Saddam and 9/11 link.

This is a factual error in your article. You have misrepresented their sub-argument. They are NOT talking about Saddam and AQ.

of the illegal work for AQ, and didn't seek to stop it (granted the US has some constraints placed on it through the consitution-where Saddam wasn't constrained in such a way), then I think you can argue that even if they didn't directly support AQ, at the very least Saddam was indirectly supporting AQ by not actively seeking to stop AQ working in his country.

groups to be analogous to allies, and the various training camps and information sharing sort of a terrorist equivalent of NATO.  They do not neccessarily agree on everything, but they tend to consider their common enemy enough for them to work together.

a stable Iraq-with a reliable oil flow as their opportunity to give Saudi Arabia the smack it deserves.

While you often hear "why Iraq, there are lots worse countries to go for first" when the reality is that we probably went for Iraq, because A) we already had a stated goal of regime change since 1998, B) Saddam was believed to have had WMD's-and the fear was that Saddam would develop them and then sell them to terrorist gropus to use against the US and their Allies and C) Iraq was the easiest target to hit at that moment.

The liberals may whine about "preemptive strikes" but I have to say I wish Clinton had invaded North Korea back in the '90's rather than giveing them the chance and ability to develop nuclear weapons-so that now North Korea is a much more powerful bully to deal with.

Ideas cannot be changed with bombs.  When you feel that your God is behind you, a well armed enemy invading your territory only serves to embolden.

Fundementalism has been around since the beginning of time.  We have a smattering but growing group of fundementalists in this country.  

Personally, I think the better way to deal with it is to truly make them a fringe faction and show the world what nutcases they are.  We're crapping the bed in Iraq because we're killing too many civies and fueling recruitment (while our own is dwindling).  Democracy, although a great thing, does not ensure that the fundies will not just vote more fundies into power.  (One could argue that this happened in this country. <coughsantorumcough>)

We are losing the propoganda war.

Immediately after 9/11 I joked with my buddies that we should just pipe old Baywatch episodes into the middle east and everybody would lose their will to fight while watching Pam Anderson bouncing down the beach.  That's being silly, but truly, I think the best method to minimize the numbers of terrorists is to export our consumer culture to them.  Start with TV/radio and go from there.  Make the middle east a good place to live--there will be less strife, and the general populace will look at the terrorist nutjobs and just that... nutjobs who want to disturb the peace.  The carrot and stick approach could work here... "here you can have money/food/whatever and if you don't take action to curb fundementalism in your country will respond with our 2000 lb. laser-guided stick."  Ultimately, it's a less costly solution than war in terms of $$$ and human lives.

Terrorism will never go away.  It just wont.  It is founded in an ideal, not a government and we could take over every country in the world and install democracies and terrorism still will not disappear.  Look what happened in the Phillipines after we expelled the Spanish.  A military presence where we are not wanted is really, really bad.  (The Phillipines is democratic and they're still struggling with Islamic terrorists there.)

---

Now, I feel the need to kill the people that attacked us, but I think we should have pulled back before we crossed the line of doing more harm than good.

I really don't think this war is winnable anymore (specifically Iraq).  

I CAN NOT believe what I just read-

"The liberals may whine about "preemptive strikes" but I have to say I wish Clinton had invaded North Korea back in the '90's rather than giving them the chance and ability to develop nuclear weapons-so that now North Korea is a much more powerful bully to deal with."

Give this girl (I think) a "5".  Honey, we must talk sometime.

I've been saying the same thing to uberhusband!

Since I have not previously heard about the above, outlined evidence I have no right to comment on their validity. However, one of the ongoing problems that this discussion often engenders concerns exactly what 'support' means.

The above examples would seem to demonstrate a definition that 'most' would agree with, however I have heard others claim that the mere satisfaction that Saddam obviously took in America's suffering would be indicative of his 'support' of Al-Qaeda. (Specifically, although hardly a strong, authoritative examples, the latter definition was EXACTLY what Alice Cooper stated on Australian TV recently as why he supported the President and the invasion.)

As an aspiring linguist who one day hopes to teach advanced foreign language learners English, I deal with these issues constantly. While they are more difficult to resolve between people who do not share a native language, this does not mean the same problem can not exist between native English speakers.

Just food for thought.

but if that's what you're trying to use this case to prove, your argument begins to somewhat resemble a wheel...

From MSNBC

do the darndest things.

Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini

No tinfoil hat here, I'm just sayin'...

Of course, there've been a few ex-American soldiers who have done "the darndest things." Obviously that doesn't perforce mean the U.S. government or the U.S. military endorses those acts. Not to say that Saddam had only our best interests at heart, of course, just pointing out that the article seems to be playing a bit fast and loose with what they consider convincing evidence.

Long story short, dealing with Iraq was necessary to deal with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the source of many al-qaeda recruits, al-qaeda finances, and most importantly, ideological inspiration.  If defeating Islamist terrorism is the goal, dealing with Saudi Arabia is unavoidable.

But, Saudi Arabia also is a major oil supplier for the world.  Were its output to evaporate and cause price increases, even temporarily, the world might relapse into global recession bringing with it a whole new slew of political problems in the periphery and amongst the major powers.

Here's what Robert Baer, former CIA analyst who specialised in the Middle East, has to say:

QUESTIONER: Either way, it would be a seismic event for the Middle East and indeed for the US, wouldn't it, if the Saudi royal family was to collapse?

ROBERT BAER: It would. You know, I take the worst case possibility and that is that Saudi Arabia takes its oil off the market, either just closes off the taps or sabotages its own facilities. And we're talking, you know, upwards of 11 million barrels a day, which would cause a recession, you know, a deep recession.

And if you took all of Saudi Arabia's capacity off for two years, again this is the worst case scenario, you're going to have a serious economic shot, a shock as bad as we saw in 1973.

QUESTIONER: As bad as '73?

ROBERT BAER: I think it'd be worse. You know, we could have the perfect storm if there were a revolution in Saudi Arabia and no one can really predict how bad it would be, or would it spill over into the other Gulf countries.

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2003/s843781.htm

So the US must deal with Saudi Arabia but can not risk oil price spikes that would severely damage the world economy.

Iraq provided a solution. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world and is far from realizing its potential.  With sufficient investment in technology and exploration, Iraq could equal Saudi Arabia in oil output ( http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/RS21626.pdf ).

If Iraq could increase its output, the US would be freer to push Saudi Arabia to change and risk instability in that state, without risking a global recession. Since a dramatic increase in oil outputs would allow Saddam to rebuild his forces and create all sorts of new trouble, his removal was necessary before oil outputs could be increased.  

Sure destabilizing Iraq carries all sorts of its own risks, but it's not implausible that it can be stabilized enough to generate a reliable output of oil.  If it can, its removal will allow the US to deal with Saudi Arabia (perhaps by pushing for democracy).

The point: Iraq was a necessary front on the war on terror. Even if it has made things worse in the short term, the most important actions necessary for defeating Islamist terror (pushing Saudi Arabia to change) could not be taken without going after Iraq.

..I agree with your main point. It is not a known fact that there were no Iraq/AQ ties. There is a general belief among most counterterrorism experts that there WAS NO CONNECTION...but it's definitely not a known fact and there's room for contention.

My only point is that - domestic terrorists like McVeigh aside -  when ex-American soldiers are found involved in plots and intrigues against foreign governments, whether as mercenaries, running shadowy front corporations or something similar, it is usually assumed by the rest of the world (and usually with justification) that these ex-soldiers are operating at the behest of the U.S. government.  Thas is why I cannot so easily dismiss these ex-Iraqi soldiers as merely enterprising freelance terrorists.

and if the author of the article were as evenhanded as you I'd have no complaints. I just don't see quite the same appreciation for nuance in the way the article handles evidence. To be blunt, the anecdote being discussed above requires you to believe their conclusion in order to be convincing, and I find that sort of circular reasoning lazy.

Also, I think it's important to keep in mind the fringe religious nature of al-Qaeda. Personally, I'd be more likely to believe an ex-American had left the reservation, so to speak, if I had reason to believe his religious sympathies might trump his national loyalty.

Again, not to say that they don't make some good points, just that I found it hard to shake the impression I was being sold something.

This says that in October 2002, the National Intelligence Estimate (by the CIA and others) said that Iraq had nothing to do with al-Qaida, hadn't sponsored past terrorist attacks on America, and probably wouldn't in the future.

US spy agencies unanimously agreed there was not a connection or a threat.

The evidence that we're finding since starting the war is interesting, but it doesn't convince me that Iraq was a big threat.  Moreover, if it's true that Bush was told by his own intelligence people (even falsely) that Iraq wasn't a threat, it's hard for me to support him saying two weeks later,

This is a man that we know has had connections with al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army.

...and it's hard to support starting the war.  Do you have any evidence that came from before the war began that Iraq was a threat?