Here's a less-than anonymous government official also stating that Saddam
Hussein was not linked to the 9-11 attack on the US. Better watch this guy,
though. If he dares to disagree with the general spin being put out by the
right wing radio spinmeisters, he could be on the list of people accused of
treason or terrorism before long. :-)


Bush says no evidence that Saddam Hussein involved in Sept. 11 attacks

By TERENCE HUNT



President Bush said Wednesday there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was
involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 _ disputing a notion held
by a majority of Americans. (AP /Charles Dharapak)


WASHINGTON (AP) - President George W. Bush said Wednesday there was no evidence
that deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - disputing an impression that critics say the
administration tried to foster to justify the war against Iraq.

"There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties," the president
said. But he also said: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved
with September the 11th."

The president's comment was the administration's firmest assertion that there
is no proven link between Saddam and Sept. 11. It came after Vice- President
Dick Cheney on Sunday clouded the issue by saying, "It's not surprising people
make that connection" between Saddam and the attacks.

Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press, also repeated an allegation - doubted by many
in the intelligence community - that Mohamed Atta, the lead Sept. 11 attacker,
met a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague five months before Sept. 11.


"We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of
confirming it or discrediting it," Cheney said Sunday. However, other U.S.
authorities have said information gathered on Atta's movement show he was on
the U.S. East Coast when that meeting supposedly took place.


Critics of the administration have pointed to statements like Cheney's as
evidence that the administration was exaggerating al-Qaida's prewar links with
Saddam to help justify the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

A recent poll indicated that nearly 70 per cent of Americans believed the Iraqi
leader probably was personally involved. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said
Tuesday: "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I
could say that."

The administration has argued that Saddam's government had close links to
al-Qaida, the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden that masterminded the
Sept. 11 attacks.

On Sunday, for example, Cheney said that success in stabilizing and
democratizing Iraq would strike a major blow at the "the geographic base of the
terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on
9-11."

Bush himself has taken to referring to Iraq as the central front in the war
against terror.

And Tuesday, in an interview on ABC's Nightline, National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice said that one of the reasons Bush went to war against Saddam
was because he posed a threat in "a region from which the 9-11 threat emerged."


Cheney on Sunday was asked whether he was surprised that more than two-thirds
of Americans in a Washington Post poll would express a belief that Iraq was
behind the attacks.

"No, I think it's not surprising that people make that connection," he replied.


Rice, asked about the same poll numbers, said: "We have never claimed that
Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9-11."

Bush said there was no attempt by the administration to try to confuse people
about any link between Saddam and Sept. 11.

"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the
11th," Bush said. "What the vice-president said was is that he (Saddam) has
been involved with al-Qaida.

"And al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida operative, was in Baghdad. He's the guy that ordered
the killing of a U.S. diplomat . . . There's no question that Saddam Hussein
had al-Qaida ties."

Most of the administration's public assertions have focused on the man Bush
mentioned, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior bin Laden associate who officials
have accused of trying to train terrorists in the use of poison for possible
attacks in Europe, running a terrorist haven in northern Iraq - an area outside
Saddam's control before the war - and organizing an attack that killed an
American aid executive in Jordan last year.