Which of the above comments were false? Some of the speculation didn't turn out, but the factual claims look true enough to me.
Before the war The 2001 President’s Daily Brief, 2001-2 Atta in Prague investigations, 2002 DIA reports, 2002 British intelligence report, 2003 CIA report, 2003 British intelligence report, 2003 Israeli intelligence Report all proved beyond any doubt that Saddam’s secular government and Al Qaeda did not trust, did not have ties to, and would not work with OBL and Al Qaeda.
Saddam’s government was secular and Saddam feared all Muslim extremists both Sunni and Shi’a as a threat to his secular government that’s why Saddam had so many Christians in key positions of his government because they were less likely to be influenced by any one of the many Muslim fundamentalists organizations who did not like Saddam’s secular government.
The Bush administration was aware that Al Qaeda hated Saddam’s secular government to the point that OBL called Saddam an infidel puppet of the US and Saddam accused OBL of being a CIA asset disguised as a religious fanatic. Saddam had warrants for the arrest of any member of Al Qaeda and even had ordered the assassinations of key religious enemies both Sunnis and Shi’a since January 1998 such as the killings of internationally respected clerics have been attributed widely to Iraqi government agents by Shi’a clergy in Iran, international human rights activists, the U.S. and other governments.
For example;
According to a report submitted to the Special Rapporteur in September 1999, one of al-Sadr’s sons, Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, was arrested along with a large number of theological students who had studied under the Ayatollah. Nineteen followers of al-Sadr reportedly were executed toward the end of 1999, including Sheikh Muhammad al-Numani, Friday imam Sheikh Abd-al-Razzaq al-Rabi’i, assistant Friday imam Kazim al-Safi, and students from a religious seminary in Najaf.
And we know that the intelligence reports saying Saddam and Al Qaeda were enimies were correct because of the fact that the joint FBI-INS-police PENTBOM investigation, the FBI program of voluntary interviews and numerous other post-9-11 inquiries, together comprising the most comprehensive criminal investigation in history --- chasing down 500,000 leads and interviewing 175,000 people —- have been unable to show “ANY” operational ties between Saddam’s secular regime and al-Qaeda should be good enough to prove that there were not any links.
Also the 2004 Carnegie study, 2004 9/11 Commission Report, 2004 Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq, 2004 CIA report, 2005 update of CIA report, 2006 Pentagon study, 2006 Senate Report of Pre-War Intelligence, 2007 Pentagon Inspector General Report, 2008 Pentagon report, 2008 Senate report, including the INS, FBI, DOD, NSA, CIA, DIA, British intelligence, and Israeli Intelligence all proved that there were NO operational ties between Saddam’s secular regime and al-Qaeda.
Even after the CIA had again refuted any connections between Iraq and the 9/11 attack, Cheney still repeated it during a Sept. 2003 appearance on Meet the Press. Shortly after Russert confronted him with polling that showed as much as 69 percent of Americans believed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney responded:
“With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.”
The problem with that is that the vice president DID know the intelligence was FALSE, but continued repeating it to support his argument for war. As a recently, (JUNE 19, 2012), declassified document by the National Security Archive reveals that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) delivered a briefing to the Bush administration which directly contradicts former Vice President Dick Cheney’s claim that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta visited an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague.
The document dated Dec. 1, 2001 and delivered to the White House on the 8th, claims that Atta “did not travel to the Czech Republic on 31 May 2000,” and adds that “the individual who attempted to enter the Czech Republic on 31 May 2000… was not the Atta who attacked the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/cheneyiraq911memo.pdf