At the center of much debate right now is whether or not Abu Musab al Zarqawi had any connection with Iraq or Saddam Hussein before the war.

10 WAYS THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ SUPPORTS THE WAR ON TERROR

5. Senior al Qaida associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi came to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment along with approximately two dozen al Qaida terrorist associates. This group stayed in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq and plotted terrorist attacks around the world. 6. A safe haven in Iraq belonging to Ansar al-Islam -- a terrorist group closely associated with Zarqawi and al Qaida -- was destroyed during Operation Iraqi Freedom. In March 2003, during a raid on the compound controlled by the terrorists in northeastern Iraq, a cache of documents was discovered, including computer discs and foreign passports belonging to fighters from various Middle East nationalities. 7. The al Qaida affiliate Ansar al-Islam is known to still be present in Iraq. Such terrorist groups are now plotting against U.S. forces in Iraq. 8. Law enforcement and intelligence operations have disrupted al Qaida associate Abu Musab Zarqawi's poison plotting in France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Russia. The facilities in Northern Iraq, set up by Zarqawi and Ansar al-Islam were, before the war, an al Qaida's poisons/toxins laboratory. 9. Abu Musa Zarqawi, the al Qaida associate with direct links to Iraq, oversaw those responsible for the assassination of USAID officer Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan last October.

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:CvSPAfMneXsJ:www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/politics/9836114.htm+%22Baghdad+in+May+2002+for+medical+treatment%22&hl=en

According to a senior administration official and intelligence officials familiar with the review, at Cheney's request CIA analysts spent several months reviewing new material gathered since Baghdad fell last year and re-examining earlier intelligence.

A U.S. official familiar with the new CIA assessment said intelligence analysts were unable to determine conclusively the nature of the relationship between al-Zarqawi and Saddam.

"It's still being worked," he said. "It (the assessment) ... doesn't make clear-cut, bottom-line judgments" about whether Saddam's regime was aiding al-Zarqawi.

He said the report contained new details of al-Zarqawi 's prewar activities in Iraq, including the arrests in late 2002 or early 2003 of three of his "associates" by the regime.

"This was brought to Saddam's attention and he ordered one of them released," he said, providing no further details.

"What is indisputable is that Zarqawi was operating out of Baghdad and was involved in a lot of bad activities," he said, including ordering Foley's killing.

The report didn't conclude that Saddam's regime had provided "aid, comfort and succor" to al-Zarqawi, a senior administration official said.

He added that there are now questions about earlier administration assertions that al-Zarqawi received treatment at a Baghdad hospital in May 2002.

"The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything," another U.S. official said.

A congressional official said members of Congress had received an intelligence report in late August containing similar findings.

The officials who described the new assessment spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is classified and because, as one put it, "I don't want to get caught in the crossfire" between the White House and the CIA.

A CIA spokesman, Mark Mansfield, declined to comment on the subject or to confirm the existence of the new analysis.

The findings - delivered to Cheney last week - appear to put the Bush administration and the CIA on a collision course again over intelligence regarding Iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/04/rumsfeld.iraq/

It's beginning to look to me as if the CIA is trying to undermine the candidacy of George W. Bush.

Wretchard at the Belmont Club:

What the CIA thought consisted of a list of indicators and assessments with the usual qualifiers: 'solid', 'credible', 'unspecified', 'believe to be reliable' -- associated with intelligence work but short of the one word which has become the retrospective requirement for action: 'certain'. What level of certitude is required of a wartime commander has never been specified, yet it is apparently something everyone should know when they see it. At the very least
Senator John Kerry  thinks so. He describes a "Global
Test" in his first televised debate with President Bush.

"No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded -- and nor would I -- the right to preempt in any way necessary, to protect the United States of America," the Democrat told moderator Jim Lehrer during the debate.

"But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do it in a way that passes the, the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people, understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Kerry's comment drew immediate criticism from Bush: "I'm not exactly sure what you mean, 'passes the global test,' [that] you take preemptive action if you pass a global test," he said during the debate. "My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure."

The "Global Test" standard is likely to raise more questions than it answers because it is a threshold without a real specification, a probability without degree. It is analytically defective because the degree of risk one is willing to endure depends on the severity of the consequences. Most people would accept a one in six chance of losing $10 at a game of cards yet refuse the same odds at Russian roulette. The proof needed to pass a "Global Test" before preempting a
suspected terrorist attack will depend on whether the threat is a gun or a suitcase nuclear bomb, and is therefore not global at all. Yet standards do have
a value in this context, provided they are not the pseudo-absolute ones implied
by a "Global Test". It is the test of reasonable action in the face of the best available information, the standard on which Eisenhower decided to launch Overlord in the middle of an Atlantic storm or which impelled Spruance to proceed to Point Luck in defense of Midway in ignorance of the exact whereabouts of the Japanese Fleet. It is no guaranty against mistakes. But it is
a guaranty against paralysis.