POAC V

Yeesh. This is the worst one so far.

The talking point
Saddam Hussein had connections to Al-Qaeda

Senate report finds no Hussein-Al Qaeda ties. The Niger-Iraq connection also did not exist.
(POAC)

Usually the "facts" occur via a live link; this one was broken.
It formerly linked to a story in the Chicago Tribune, but maybe the Tribune regretted publishing the article, because it is gone.

Here is a .pdf file of a large portion of the report, concerning Hussein.

I've complained about this senate report before, noting that its conclusions fly in the face of the evidence. Headlines declared that there were no ties, but in the report itself (page 64) we find:

(U) In June 2002, the CIA characterized the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden:

In contrast to the traditional patron-client relationship Iraq enjoys with secular Palestinian groups, the ties between Saddam and bin Laden appear much like those between rival intelligence services, with each trying to exploit the other for its own benefit.

No ties, except that the nonexistent ties resemble a certain type of tie according to the CIA.

And there's an affirmation that Hussein's Iraq had discussion with al Qaeda:

(U) During his testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in September 2002, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet stated that, "The intelligence indicates that the two sides at various points have discussed safe-haven, training and reciprocal non-aggression. There are several reported suggestions by al-Qa'ida to Iraq about joint terrorist ventures, but in no case can we establish that Iraq accepted or followed up on these suggestions.

In other words, there was a diplomatic relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda supported by evidence, but no evidence of a collaborative relationship between the two.

Liberals seem fond of noting the lack of evidence for a collaborative relationship to support (via the dual fallacies of equivocation and appeal to ignorance) the claim that there was no relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda at all.

As the evidence from the report shows (even if it doesn't dawn on our fine senators enough to make it into their conclusion), there was evidence for a diplomatic relationship, and we still don't know to what extent, if any, a collaborative relationship existed.

There is evidence of a collaborative relationship, by the way, but it's tenuous.

POAC blows it with the overbroad claim of no relationship between Hussein and al Qaida. There was a diplomatic relationship, but little evidence of collaboration. You can raise doubt about a claim by citing a lack of evidence, but you can't debunk it by that method.

There's plenty more in the senate report that should debunk the conclusions of the report. Read it sometime (I'll recommend page 68 in addition to what I've sampled here).

***

We also have the claim that there was no tie between Hussein and Niger. On the contrary, Joe Wilson's own report confirmed that Iraqi officials approached Niger to establish trade (uranium is just about the only thing that Niger has worth trading), and the Nigerian official to whom Wilson spoke reportedly took the overture as an offer to trade for uranium.

Wilson inexplicably left that out of his article about what he didn't find in Niger (inexplicable unless he had a political axe to grind by lying about what he found in Niger).

Christopher Hitchens handling of the English language makes for a delightful account of Wilson's adventure.

That's now five utter failures in a row for POAC.