Wrong. The evidence is strong, they just don't want to go that route and here is why...
Insight Magazine
Sep 29, 2003
Senior investigators and analysts in the U.S. government have concluded that Iraq acted as a state sponsor of terrorism against Americans and logistically supported the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - confirming news reports that until now have emerged only in bits and pieces. A senior government official responsible for investigating terrorism tells Insight that while Saddam Hussein may not have had details of the Sept. 11 attacks in advance, he "gave assistance for whatever al-Qaeda came up with." That assistance, confirmed independently, came in a variety of ways, including financial support spun out through a complex web of financial institutions in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy and elsewhere. Long suspected of having terrorist ties to al-Qaeda, they now have been linked to Iraq as well.
Insiders say the failure to assign responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks to Iraq, Afghanistan or any other nation-state is intentional. "The administration does not want the victims of Sept. 11 interfering with its foreign policy," says Peter M. Leitner, director of the Washington Center for Peace and Justice (WCPJ). Leitner says the Bush administration may be concerned that if other victims of the Sept. 11 attacks also filed lawsuits and won civil-damage awards it would reduce Iraqi resources that the administration wants to use to rebuild the country. Leitner and others say this explains Bush's reticence at this time to report the convincing evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda that has been collected by U.S. investigators and private organizations seeking damages. "The [Bush] administration is intentionally changing the topic," claims Leitner, and sidestepping the issue that "Iraq has been in a proxy war against the U.S. for years and has used al-Qaeda in that war against the United States."
That's both false and irrelevant. The Administration has never said that Saddam or Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. What they've said is that there is no concrete evidence linking the two. Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. They've made that exact point so many times its like a broken record. Yet still, people get it wrong.
Moreover, the CIA memo does not claim that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. It does say that Iraq had something to do with Al Qaeda. That's significant because contact between Iraq and Al Qaeda refutes the argument that Iraq and Al Qaeda would never work together.
To this day, the official position of this administration is that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 (as just one example.)
No, the official position is that they have no concrete evidence linking them to that specific event. But they do not take the position that Iraq did not have a connection to 911. They just say nothing has emerged that makes the case.
The case that the Saddam Hussein regime had connections to Al Qaeda in general is pretty much solid, even if the Bush Administration is still reluctant to state it that way. The evidence is out there for all to see.
I believe the Bush Administration’s reluctance to officially conclude the obvious has more to do with political timing than anything else. In other words, they will lay their conclusion and declassified evidence on the table sometime next summer, when it will have the most impact.