Just the Facts

Just the Facts: "IT'S CONVENTIONAL WISDOM. In fact, it's more than conventional wisdom. It's an article of faith among the enlightened: There was no connection, at least no significant connection, between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Senate minority leader Harry Reid put it this way: 'There was [sic] no terrorists in Iraq.' His colleague, Carl Levin, member of both the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, says Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda was 'nonexistent.'
Senators Reid and Levin are Democrats, to be sure. But few prominent Republicans have challenged these assertions. And the Bush administration has been as quiet as a mouse--and just as meek. So the conventional wisdom reigns.
We have long dissented from this conventional wisdom. We have argued in these pages that the connections between Saddam and terrorists were substantial and significant. Stephen Hayes--among others--has reported over the past three years on extensive evidence of terror ties to Saddam's regime. In our judgment, the evidence for such ties has become more convincing, not less, as more information has become available.
Can we ever really know the whole truth--or almost the whole truth? Yes. How? Let us--all of us--read the mass of documents captured after the fall of the Saddam regime. Stephen Hayes's reporting, including his article in this issue, suggests to us that these documents would confirm the argument for a terror connection. But let everyone make up his own mind, based on his own reading of the documents."