Cons STILL trying to link Saddam and AL Queda...

[booley]

Ok I keep seeing this more and more. But I distinctly recall that all of this "evidence' had been discredited.

So did I imagine that? Or do these yahoos think that repeating a lie is the same as proving it?

Here's an example. Please feel free to refute this if you have links...

"The Saddam-Al Qaeda Connection
By W. Thomas Smith, Jr.
Jan 16, 2006

The recent revelation by Stephen F. Hayes in The Weekly Standard that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had ties to – and was training thousands of – terrorists in the years prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is actually no revelation at all. It is being treated as such by many Americans, cautiously praised by the White House, and dismissed as groundless by those opposed to the war.
Don’t get me wrong: Hayes’ assertions are on the mark. But those with connections to the U.S. special operations community have long known that the pre-war link between Saddam and the Al Qaeda terrorist network is not only a fact, but one that had to be addressed as part of the global war on terror.
I first began writing about this in August 2004 after a conversation with a good friend of mine, Commander Mark Divine, a U.S. Navy SEAL officer who had just returned from Iraq, where he was tasked with evaluating joint operations between SEALs and a then-developing Marine Corps special ops team. Divine told me, and I subsequently reported in National Review Online, “There is tremendous evidence to suggest there were terrorist training camps in Iraq before 9/11.”
I also wrote about the publicly and journalistically glossed-over 9/11 Commission Report that clearly stated, “ bin Laden himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995.” Bin Laden asked the Iraqi official for weapons procurement assistance and – get this – permission to establish terrorist training facilities in Iraq.
Granted, the Commission did say, “There is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request.” But my question today is: what about any evidence to suggest Iraq did not respond? There is no such evidence, and to me that is a far more important question, considering the fact that the Commission concluded, “The ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.”
Moreover, there was Ansar al Islam, an Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group with training camps in Northern Iraq prior to 2003. This group was hoping to establish an Islamist state in Iraq. But the – again, rarely read – 9/11 Commission Report clearly states, “There are indications that the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.”
But don’t take my word for it, or the Commission’s.
In her book, Masters of Chaos, author and U.S. News & World Report senior writer Linda Robinson describes an attack on Sargat – an enormously significant international terrorist training camp in northeastern Iraq, near the Iranian border. The camp was being run by Ansar al Islam, and based on Robinson’s conversations with the U.S. Army special operators who led the attack, it is indeed "more than plausible" that Al Qaeda members trained there.
........................"

full story here if you have the stomach...
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/WThomasSmithJr/2006/01/16/182446.html

[jobycom]

1. They're still trying to prove that Spain blew up the USS Maine.

I've quit giving a damn with their deluded little minds dream up. It takes a lot of delusion to run those boats up the Nile.

[DarkTirade]

2. I have a link!

They're both dark-skinned... and they both have facial hair... oh, and they're both homo sapiens.
There it is right there, proof that Saddam personally planned 9-11.

[Debs]

3. Well we have been in Iraq for three years

Exactly WHERE are the photos of these terrorist training camps? where is the satelite photos from before the invasion. We can take a satlite photo of a pack of cigarettes on the ground. This is a problem with the rightwing. If it is necessary for propaganda purposes to them it becomes true for that reason alone and no amount of factual refutation can stop them from slinking away when their pathetic attempts to show bogus information is destroyed then bringing it up again later as if it were valid. These talking points become like the undead. There seems to be no way to drive a stake through their hearts. We will still soon hear about Mohhamed Atta again.

[booley]

4. so what here has been refuted?

I know lots it has been. But tihs was covered so long ago that much of it seems ot have dropped down the memory hole.