You know how the left has been insisting - all the way up to right now - that Saddam had no ties to terrorist groups? And you know how that's totally retarded? It's really retarded:

Saddam Hussein's intelligence service collected information on dozens of sites in Israel, including airports, other transportation centers, as well as scientific and religious centers that were thought to be potential targets for attacks. Among the sources providing intelligence to Saddam's regime was Force 17, the security force of Yasser Arafat, which planned and carried out from its Ramallah headquarters attacks against Israeli targets. This information emerged following the release of documents captured during the American invasion in 2003 and made available as part of a West Point program to evaluate the lessons of the war in Iraq... A document from 2002, from the chief of staff of the Al-Quds Army, sent to the Karbala Division, orders each brigade to build a model of an Israeli town and practice taking it by force. Hamas representatives, including Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who was assassinated by the Israel Defense Forces in 2004, contacted Iraqi intelligence and asked to coordinate attacks against American and Israeli targets to delay the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

That can't be true, of course, because it would also mean that the Israel's partners for peace on the Palestinian side aren't interested in peace at all. And we've got hundreds of State Department statements that say exactly the opposite. To believe something like these explicit, black-letter captured documents you'd have to believe that the US was funding the Palestinians to the tune of millions of dollars at the same time that the Palestinians were conspiring to materially undermine the US military effort in Iraq.

And isn't it nice that major media organizations are still writing that "the study’s assessment of Iraq's lack of links to Al-Qaeda represents a final acceptance by the Pentagon that it was wrong to make such claims" when the study very much linked Iraq to AQ? It's almost like they've got an agenda.

References:
* Saddam Hussein had no direct ties to al-Qaida, says Pentagon study [Guardian]
* Media Reports Exactly Backwards On Saddam-AQ Links [MR]
* Saddam collected information on dozens of potential targets in Israel [Ha'aretz]
* Saddam Hussein’s son Uday plotted to send hit squad into UK [Times Online]
* Saddam supported at least two al-Qaeda groups: Pentagon Update: What it means

Previously:
* Josh Marshall, Liberal Sophisticate: Conservatives Should "Grow Up" About Ahmadinejad's Desecration Of Ground Zero
* The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics
* Chicago Palestinian Convicted of Spying For Saddam