Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.

"Other terrorist groups." Well, I guess that was okay, then. As long as they weren't al Qaeda members.

The key to this whole thing is where the bar is being set. At this point, the CIA and the leftists hooting about this are setting it at "mature symbiotic relationship"* with terrorists that are specifically card-carrying members of al Qaeda.

In this way, any contacts below this level, or with terrorists who are not actually announced al Qaeda members can be discarded.

Reading the documents (I'm doing mostly appendixes first) it becomes obvious that what this is really about is a CIA turf war. They are mightily pissed that they were routed around--accurately, legally, or not--and this seems to be a large issue in the documents. Might also explain the current plentiful supply of "anonymous intelligence officials" dropping tomatoes on the administration.

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*"Mature symbiotic relationship" seems to fall somewhere just short of Saddam actually having sex with bin Laden. No, I don't know who would be on top.