Now that Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that he has never seen any strong evidence linking Saddam Hussein with Al Qa'ida, perhaps Mr Hayes will acknowledge that it was always a lie. Anyway, why would a secular ruler like Saddam trust Al Qa'ida, who see him as a traitor to Islam? Why would Saddam risk everything, to give WMD (which he hadn't got) to his mortal enemies? Al Qa'ida attacked the USA; Saddam never did. So the right US response was to counter-attack against Al Qa'ida. They should have put ground troops into the areas of Afghanistan where bin Laden and his cronies were hiding, surrounded them and killed them. Instead of which, fool Bush attacked Iraq, where bin Laden wasn't! Doh.