Cleverly Named Blog: Condoleezza Rice

"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he [Saddam Hussein] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

We clearly know that there were in the past and have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of al-Qaida going back for actually quite a long time.
We know too that several of the detainees, in particular some high ranking detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to al-Qaida in chemical weapons development.So, yes, there are contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida.
We know that Saddam Hussein has a long history with terrorism in general. And there are some al-Qaida personnel who found refuge in Baghdad.
No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on September 11, so we don't want to push this too far, but this is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clear, and we're learning more.
We're learning more because we have a lot of detainees who are able to fill in pieces of the puzzle.
And when the picture is clear, we'll make full disclosure about it.
But, yes, there clearly are contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq that can be documented.
There clearly is testimony that some of these contacts have been important contacts and there's a relationship here.

"It was a case that said he was trying to reconstitute. He's trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year."

"The intelligence assessment was that he was reconstituting his nuclear program; that, left unchecked, he would have a nuclear weapon by the end of the year. "

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