Back in the run-up to the absurd Iraqi war, we pointed out repeatedly that at the end of the day, Al Qaeda didn’t think any more of Saddam than they did of us, and that the feeling was probably mutual. We figured Hussein was a secular, neo-Stalinist dictator. He had no more patience with theocracy than do we, but for starkly different reasons.

Turns out, we were right.

A Senate report released today says that Saddam Hussein had a hostile relationship with al-Qaida and that the Iraqi dictator viewed the terrorist organization as a threat to his regime. In fact, according to the report, Hussein even tried to kill al-Zarqawi. The report also says that the US government was warned by several intelligence agencies that the Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, the US’s only source of WMD allegations, was unreliable.

There’s more, of course.