No Ties Between Saddam and...

For all those libs and anti-Bush hacks that continue to assert that tired old thread of "no link between Saddam Hussein and pre-9/11 al'Qaeda (in spite of findings to the contrary in the 9/11 Commission's report), here is just one more nail for your coffin:

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

... Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda... Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000.

"As much as we overestimated WMD, it appears we underestimated [Saddam Hussein's] support for transregional terrorists," says one intelligence official.
...
The official continued: "[Saddam] used these groups because he was interested in extending his influence and extending the influence of Iraq. There are definite and absolute ties to terrorism. The evidence is there, especially at the network level. ...To say Iraq wasn't involved in terrorism is flat wrong."

Mr. Hayes goes on to speak in depth of the mountain of documents that have been recovered from the region, and of the lack of progress the U.S. intelligence community has so far made in thoroughly examining these documents. He also outlines the reasons most of the documentation has not yet been released either to the media or even to members of Congress.

But this conclusion is rather piercing in its plain truthfulness:

The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

Hat-tip: Brainster's Blog