From today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Bush: No Iraq link to 9/11 found":

President Bush, having repeatedly linked Saddam Hussein to the terrorist organization behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said yesterday there is no evidence that the deposed Iraqi leader had a hand in those attacks, in contrast to the belief of most Americans.

The president's comments came in response to a reporter's question about Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press" program that Iraq was the "geographic base" of the terrorists behind the attacks on New York and Washington.

Bush said yesterday there was no attempt by the administration to try to confuse people about any link between Saddam and Sept. 11.

"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," Bush said. "What the vice president said was is that he (Saddam) has been involved with al-Qaida.

"And al-Zarqawi, an al-Qaida operative, was in Baghdad. He's the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S. diplomat. ... There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties."

Most of the administration's public assertions have focused on the man Bush mentioned, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior Osama bin Laden associate whom officials have accused of trying to train terrorists in the use of poison for possible attacks in Europe, running a terrorist haven in northern Iraq -- an area outside Saddam's control -- and organizing an attack that killed an American aid executive in Jordan last year.

Security analysts, however, say al-Zarqawi made his way to Iraq, where his leg was amputated. . Unconfirmed reports claim he then visited northern Iraq, where a militant Islamic group affiliated with al-Qaida is encamped not far from the border with Iran.

The group, however, far from being an ally of Saddam, sought to replace his secular government with an Islamic regime.

A senior intelligence official, who asked not to be identified, said the information linking the group, Ansar al Islam, to Saddam comes "almost exclusively from defectors produced by the Iraqi opposition. They are not uniformly credible."