I have been hearing a lot about Saddam having "no links to terrorism." Not "no links to al-Quaeda," or "no links to 9/11" but "no links to terrorism," period.

Saddam attempted to assassinate the former President Bush. That might be a link.

Saddam supports terrorists and their families in Israel by paying them. That might be a link.

Saddam has allowed terrorists like Abu Nidal and others to reside in Baghdad...at least until Nidal got on someone's bad side. Saddam offered bin Laden sanctuary in Iraq, but was refused.

Back when it was in the interests of the Left and the Democratic Party to support such a link, the media enthusiastically supported it (it's GOOD to have the press as your buttmonkey). Someone with more ambition than I collected a few such items. Some are more spurious than others, but judge for yourself.

For simplicity, I will assume that all statements linking Saddam to terrorists and terror operations by defectors, former Iraqi military personnel, and others are all lies or biased. That links to Iraq to the original WTC bombing are from spurious sources. That Saddam was shocked...shocked! to find that terror camps killing the Kurds were operating in northern Iraq, and that the Czech intelligence services are full of crap when they still insist on the Atta-Prague connection.

Given that all the information is not in yet, it might not be a bad idea to back off from the absolutes a bit in this discussion.