This report says there were no "strong ties", which supposedly refutes Cheney. But what's a "strong" tie? Were there "weak ties", then? And those don't count? Are "strong ties" the only kind of "ties" we're allowed to count? Who decides whether a "tie" is "strong"? (The left?) Basically, here's what the real definition is: "strong ties" are any ties that are stronger than... whatever ties Iraq may have had with Al Qaeda. Thus, Iraq (by definition - because they defined it this way) didn't have "strong ties" with Al Qaeda, and (therefore) Bush etc. are liars because they said otherwise (<-this part's just a plain old straw man; even here Cheney's only saying Al Qaeda was in Iraq, and nothing about "ties").
Similar phenomenon occurs with the definition of "Al Qaeda" itself. Obviously, Zarqawi was in Iraq. But the left really, really wants to always be able to say "Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq". Solution? Simple: even if he was in Iraq before the invasion, Zarqawi "wasn't in Al Qaeda" at the time. Same person, but not "in Al Qaeda", therefore Iraq = no ties to Al Qaeda (even if there were ties to Zarqawi!), thus Bush lied etc. The question of just why exactly we're supposed to care, necessarily, whether someone like Zarqawi is "in Al Qaeda" or "not in Al Qaeda" at any given time, or even whether being "in Al Qaeda" is necessarily such a well-defined thing in the first place, is never answered. The formula is simple: whatever ties you find to whatever terrorists, just insist that they weren't "in Al Qaeda" at the time of the ties. According to the left, this makes it ok and it makes fighting them wrong. We're only allowed to care about people who are officially "in Al Qaeda" for some reason.
The entire approach is fundamentally intellectually dishonest and impossible to take seriously anymore.
This whole post #15 is worth re-reading and is in part (along with some really good collections of links in other posts) why I am bookmarking this thread.
The last few years have been like a post-graduate course in propaganda, every possible propaganda technique has been pulled out of the toolkit and is right out there for us to see. Honest reporting is a rarity, most articles are as ripe for de-coding as anything written by Fisk.
You are right in noting how a long line of contacts between Saddam's intelligence circles and Bin Ladin's people can be simply defined out of existence. There were no "strong" contacts. There was no "operational" relationship. What does any of that mean? It means whatever you wish it to mean. Prove a long line of contacts, and unless you have the minutes of the meetings, they were just drinking tea as far as anyone knows.
This ignores the obvious fact that "espionage" is intended to be secret, below the radar, deniable. There isn't supposed to be a lot of public documentation of these contacts. Any contacts you can find will be by definition the tip of the iceberg. When you find hundreds of documents and hundreds of contacts in what is primarily an espionage relationship, you have to recognize that its a very big iceberg.
Something that has almost completely dropped down the memory hole, but which I remember, were the stockpiles of nerve agent found at several ammo dumps during the invasion. This occurred at least 3 times that I remember. In each case, there was some excitement from the reporters involved that they had found WMD. In each case after a day or two it would be reported that, no, it was just agricultural pesticide.
There was a process plant discovered that produced nerve agent. The plant manager was a military general, the place was fenced off and surrounded by guard towers, with infantry for security.
Again, after a couple of days, it was announced that no, it was just an agricultural pesticide plant.
I remember this every time anyone argues that we never found WMD in Iraq. The difference between pesticide and nerve agent is only in its application. Spread it on your fields, diluted, and its pesticide. Spread it on Iranian troops, concentrated, its nerve agent. The Iraqis used to call it bug poison, for a reason. It is.
So stockpiles of WMD have been defined out of existence.