CNN.com - Cheney, Edwards stretch findings and facts

Democrat John Edwards and Vice President Dick Cheney stretched the findings of U.S. intelligence to their own ends Tuesday night in tangling over Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al Qaeda.

Edwards said the connection between Saddam and the terrorist network was minimal or nonexistent; Cheney asserted Saddam's Iraq "had an established relationship with al Qaeda."

Both statements mask what intelligence sources have said. The contacts were limited and sketchy, mostly Iraqi intelligence agents and al Qaeda operatives, and did not amount to state sponsorship of al Qaeda or any link to the September 11 attacks, U.S. intelligence officials have said.

But the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report on flawed Iraqi intelligence did conclude that the CIA reasonably assessed there probably were several contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda throughout the 1990s, although they did not add up to a formal relationship.

CIA Report Finds No Conclusive Zarqawi-Saddam Link

A CIA report has found no conclusive evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein harbored Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which the Bush administration asserted before the invasion of Iraq.

...But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the report, which was a mix of new information and a look at some older information, did not make any final judgments or come to any definitive conclusions.