Again, goes back to that dicey definition of "ties." Seems to me you and the blog you cited are willing to engage in a bit of crass reductionism to make this connection.
Reb, it is certainly well within your rights to ignore whatever evidence that you want to ignore in order to defend your beliefs.
Forget the blog. I just cut and pasted the report name out of the Australian column and googled the report name. That blog happened to come up, so I cut and pasted for some background. The blog opinion, itself, is not the issue. What is of issue is the substance of the report, which is why I directly linked the report, so you could read it and make up your own mind.
I'm not ignoring evidence to defend my beliefs. I'm not denying that Hussein did, indeed have connections to terrorist organizations. But again, I don't see these connections to warrant the justification to overthrow his regime and remove him from power.
Again, if Hussein had ties to terrorist organizations, how deep and significant were these ties. That blog you cited seems to be spinning things to inflate this "threat" which Hussein posed. The argument does stem from the fact that the administration misled the American people about Hussein's connection to various terror networks--furthermore, if one wants to be real reductionist, a case can be made to invade several countries just because either the governments and/or the dictators had and continue to have ties to terrorist organizations.
Where is the hew and cry to invade these regimes?
Again, any Middle Eastern expert will point out that Hussein purposely held most of these radical jihadist organizations at arm's length. To paint Hussein as a prime sponsor and supporter of these organizations is completely misleading.
I categorically deny any innocent intentions of spinning this supposed "connection" between terror organizations by conflating the meaning of "connection" and "link" to "potential threat."
The issue again boils down to whether or not these "ties" to terrorist organizations justified invading Iraq. And the answer is categorically, uniquivically, hell no because if the United States is in the business of invading countries with governments who have "links" to terror organizations based on "potential threats," then we might as well just invade most of Africa, the middle east, southeast Asia, and South America.