I'm surprised you missed it. Cheney repeated his false claim just a couple of days before the Commission released that segment of its report, and Bush even backed him up.

The panel's findings were released two days after Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida.
...
President Bush defended the statement in a news conference Tuesday, saying the presence in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is accused of trying to disrupt the transfer of sovereignty as well as last month's decapitation of American Nicholas Berg, provides "the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida."

MSNBC

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney, anxious to defend the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely discredited claim: that Saddam Hussein might have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Evidence of a connection, if any exists, has never been made public. Details that Cheney cited to make the case that the Iraqi dictator had ties to Al Qaeda have been dismissed by the CIA as having no basis, according to analysts and officials. Even before the war in Iraq, most Bush officials did not explicitly state that Iraq had a part in the attack on the United States two years ago.

But Cheney left that possibility wide open in a nationally televised interview two days ago, claiming that the administration is learning "more and more" about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks. The statement surprised some analysts and officials who have reviewed intelligence reports from Iraq.

Boston Globe

Googling "cheney "al qaeda" Iraq connection" turned up 50,100 hits. I think a couple of excerpts are sufficient.

As for how I'm defining my terms, well, uh, gb, you're replying to the post in which I defined the terms "connection" versus "link" using Webster's dictionary. Cheney claims a "connection" and a "relationship", flying in the face of the 9/11 Commission's conclusions.

Btw, do you think that the US has an "ongoing relationship" with say, N Korea or say, Iran

Interesting tangent to take. Are you now saying that what Cheney and his cohorts actually meant was that Iraq and al Qaeda have a "negative relationship" in the sense of being adversaries? That's not going to take you anywhere useful, since the fear mongered by the Bush Administration was the imagined possibility that Iraq would help al Qaeda as an ally and thus Iraq was a threat to the US. If Iraq was actually the enemy of al Qaeda, wouldn't that make Iraq our friend? Conquest is a hell of a thing to do to a friend!