[b]Nariyah Al Sabah refutes this.[/b]
[url=www.itv.com/news/267953.html]Bin Laden 'shunned' Saddam link-up[/url]
17.27PM BST, 9 Jun 2003
Osama bin Laden rejected proposals to plot joint terror attacks with Saddam Hussein's regime, two captured al-Qaeda leaders have told CIA interrogators.
Bin Laden vetoed the suggestion because he did not want to be indebted to the Iraqi leader, according to al-Qaeda planner and recruiter Abu Zubaydah, who was seized last March.
Another al-Qaeda leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the group's head of operations before he was captured in Pakistan earlier this year, also claimed that the terrorist network did not work with Iraq, US officials said.
Washington frequently cited alleged links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime as a justification for the war on Iraq.
President George Bush warned several times of the dire consequences of the terror network getting hold of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq.
US forces have not discovered any firm evidence of joint operations by Iraq and al-Qaeda, or any proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, in the two months since the war ended.
Zubaydah's debriefing report was circulated within the US intelligence community last year, but his statements were not made public by the Bush administration when discussing alleged ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, senior American officials said.
"This gets to the serious question of to what extent did they try to align the facts with the conclusions that they wanted," one intelligence official said.
"Things pointing in one direction were given a lot of weight, and other things were discounted."