Now you are changing your story.
Your claims dont match the record nor the statements of the administration.... Here is the basic administration position:
"There‘s no question Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties."
- President George W Bush
Here's you:
"there is no link between Saddam and 9/11"
administration in particular Bush has not said that, they said there was "no evidence of a 9/11 link"
still, there are some curious links out there ...
http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages_03/6590.html ... the administration is just not going out on a limb on them.
"any "link" between AQ and the Iraq government was through a separate entity called Ansar al-Islam. "
That was just one of *many* links that we have evidence for, and mentioned by various administration sources. Are you putting Zarquawi under the 'ansar al-islam' link? what about the training in the sudan by IIS agents to Al Qaeda? what about the meetings in Afghanistan between Saddam's agents and Bin Laden and Zawahiri?
"The nature of the relationship between Ansar al-Islam and Saddam's government was minimal and non-operational."
This too is disputed by administration and other sources; IIS was paying members of ansar al-islam, saddam was bankrolling the group, just as saddam bankrolled many palestinian and other terror groups.
The evidence is there ...
"One of the more interesting pieces of postwar evidence was uncovered in Baghdad by reporters for the Toronto Star and London‘s Sunday Telegraph. The February 19, 1998, memo from Iraqi intelligence, in which bin Laden‘s name was covered over with Liquid Paper, reported planned meetings with an al Qaeda representative visiting Baghdad. Days later al Qaeda issued a fatwa alleging U.S. crimes against Iraq. At about the same time, a U.S. government source tells Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, Iraq paid bin Laden deputy Ayman Zawahiri $300,000."
http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages_03/5635.html