” ‘We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the eleventh,’ [President] Bush said prior to a cabinet meeting on September 17, 2003. ‘Now, what the vice president [Dick Cheney] said [on Meet the Press, three days earlier] was–is that [Saddam] has been involved with al Qaeda and [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda operative[,] was in Baghdad. He’s the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S. diplomat. He’s a man who’s still running loose involved with the poisons network, involved with [Kurdish Sunni Islamist group] Ansar al-Islam. There’s no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties.’ ”
– Stephen F. Hayes, The Connection, Page 23