Saddam & al-Qaeda, updated (a long post)
The editorial in the WSJ yesterday brings home several of the points that are being discussed in the blogosphere, namely,

1. the actual commission findings
   
2. Tenet's letter
   
3. Atta's Prague meeting
   
4. the 1998 indictment against binLaden, which states,
   

   "In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq"

plus other details on the links between al-Qaeda and Iran.

The Weekly Standard has an article by Stephen B Hayes, which

• states "On August 27, 1998, Uday Hussein's state-run newspaper, Babel, proclaimed bin Laden an "Arab and Islamic hero." Jabir Salim, an Iraqi intelligence agent stationed in Prague who defected in 1998, reported to British intelligence that he had received instructions from Baghdad, and $150,000, to recruit an Islamic militant to attack the broadcast headquarters of Radio Free Iraq in the Czech capital. And virtually no one disputes that Saddam offered bin Laden safe haven in Iraq in late 1998 or early 1999", receiving medical treatment.
  
• questions "The 9/11 Commission staff statement also states that "two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." Leaving aside the fact that this claim plainly contradicts the ties between Iraq and al Qaeda cited in the same paragraph, why are these bin Laden associates deemed credible?"
  
• and asks "But how can the 9/11 Commission staffers dismiss any potential Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks without even a mention of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir?"

I almost never agree with Bill O'Reilly, but he raised a valid point last evening,

The smoking gun is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search), an Al Qaeda leader who found his way to Baghdad after being severely wounded fighting against American forces in Afghanistan.
Zarqawi arrived in Iraq in May of 2002 and had surgery in an Iraqi hospital, run by -- are you ready -- Uday Hussein. I believe that might be a tie, but there's more. . .
. . .Zarqawi wound up back in Iraq after the assassination of Foley and met up with the Ansar al-Islam group, which operated in Northern Iraq and is affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi is now believed to be in Fallujah. Power Line has more on the subject (via Biased BBC).
Update: The New York Times asks Show us the proof, to which Richard Miniterlists the following (my highlights)

* Abdul Rahman Yasin, a member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb, fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Yasin both a home and a salary.

* Bin Laden met eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and with Saddam's external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, at the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 6, 2003.

* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Powell.

* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid '90s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator.

* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested by Pakistani authorities. Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2.

* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan — who is charged by a Spanish court with being "directly involved with the preparation and planning" of the Sept. 11 attacks — that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his "al Qaeda nom de guerre."

* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as "Abu Mohammed," told the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden's fighters in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad, where militants trained to hijack planes with knives — on a full-size Boeing 707.

* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddam's son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

* The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiri's bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time.

* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates "converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaeda's global network.

* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Wounded, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When he recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, a U.S. Agency for International Development official. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi's cell in Iraq.

* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a London's Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit "youth to train for the jihad" at a "headquarters for international holy warrior network" in Baghdad.

* CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Iraq has in the past provided training in document-forgery and bomb-making to al Qaeda. It also provided training in poisons and gasses to two al Qaeda associates; one of these [al Qaeda] associates characterized the relationship as successful. . . . This information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources."

Must it all come down to partisan politics?

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher's Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around... per the Watcher's instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.