I don’t grasp why you think a CNN article based on what CNN’s State Department beat reporter, Koppel, is somehow more important than all the official statements made by the State Department, Pentagon, CIA, National Security Adviser, Bush/Powell/Rice, etc. The article is just a CNN write-up of a routine Foggy Bottom press conference.
This article is not referenced, cited, or explained by anyone. It is a write-up of a conference held in Beirut in early 2001.
It CLEARLY shows Iraq and Al Qaeda in the same room in a coordinating conference roughly 7 months BEFORE 9/11.
It makes it IMPOSSIBLE to claim they had no ties.
If General Motors, FOMOCO, the UAW, the AFL/CIO, and the Labor Relations Board, all had a conference, would you accept the notion that GM has absolutly ZERO ties to the AFL/CIO?