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3. Colin Powell says there is no evidence. In January, Colin Powell said there was no "concrete evidence" of a connection between Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Colin Powell is contradicted by the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee."

Actually on this one I think Perlstein is simply repeating the media lie about what Colin Powell said, not what he *actually* said, which was fairly non-commital (ie "no smoking-gun evidence ") in to no evidence at all.

What Powell said, which Perlstein has spun into "no evidence":

"I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection," Mr. Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. "But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

The 9/11 Commission and the various addition links cited in sources indicate that Saddam's Regime and Al Qaeda had links and contacts. Whether you want to call it 'smoking-gun' or merely 'the smoke around a fire'.

This was Powell in more full testimony in 2003: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you can look at Zarkawi, (Abu Mussab) al-Zarkawi, who is still out there operating today, who was an al-Qaida associate, who was wounded in Afghanistan, took refuge in Baghdad, working out of Baghdad, worked with the Ansar al Islam group up in northeastern Iraq, that produced a so-called poison factory, a group that we hit when we went into Iraq. They were involved in trying to smuggle things, manufacture and smuggle things like ricin into Europe to attack various targets in Europe with. He also, Zarkawi, was responsible for the assassination of a man named Foley, who worked for A.I.D. in Amman, Jordan, an American assigned over there. ... We haven't really had the time yet to pore through all those records in Baghdad. We'll find ample evidence confirming the link--that is the connection, if you will, between al Qaida and the Iraqi intelligence services. They have worked together on a number of occasions.