Knight Ridder Gets It Wrong, by Stephen Hayes

...By Wednesday, Knight Ridder had posted a correction. "President Bush's comments about terrorism were incorrectly reported in that saying the president insisted there was an operational link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The president suggested that such a link existed, but didn't explicitly make that connection."

The correction is incorrect. The president never even "suggested that such a link"--the referent is an "operational link"--existed.

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How many terrorist groups have "established formal relationships" with their state sponsors? State sponsors often--but not always--prefer to keep their terrorist connections loose and informal so that they might avoid detection, deniability being a major goal of states that use terrorists to do their dirty work.

The Senate Intelligence Committee language is important for another reason: Documents from the Iraqi Intelligence service do suggest an "established relationship," just not "an established formal relationship." A report in the June 25, 2004, New York Times, was based on an internal Iraqi Intelligence document: When bin Laden left the Sudan in 1996, according to the Iraqi Intelligence document, Iraqi Intelligence began "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of [bin Laden's] current location." The report also indicates that bin Laden "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative" and that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."

The Iraqis themselves, then, talked about the connection with al Qaeda in terms of the "relationship" and "cooperation." At the same time, bin Laden was reluctant to formalize the relationship.

Does the lack of an "established formal relationship" preclude cooperation? Not according to bin Laden. The same internal Iraqi Intelligence document reports that bin Laden "requested joint operations against foreign forces" based in Saudi Arabia.

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the Senate Intelligence Committee report, based on CIA findings, concludes not only that the Iraqi regime "certainly" knew of Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad, but also that Zarqawi and his network were "operating" in the Iraqi capital and in northern Iraq.These facts were left out of the Knight Ridder story...