ANDREW BOLT WRITES THAT WE’RE BEHEADING OURSELVES, and the media are the knife:

Not only did Saddam house and help terrorists, including Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Palestinian suicide bombers and a bomb-maker of the 1993 World Trade Centre attack, but his scientists worked on chemical and biological weapons up until the war, as the Iraq Survey Group now confirms. The day would surely come when Saddam’s weapons and the terrorists who wanted them finally met.

This is what Bush, Britain’s Tony Blair and our John Howard warned of. But now this history is being shamelessly rewritten in the media.

This week’s 9/11 commission reports also said Saddam approached al-Qaida at least three times when it was based in Sudan, and again, it seems, when it was in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden asked for training camps and weapons, but, the reports claim, “Iraq apparently never responded”, and the talks “do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship”, although at least one Iraqi terrorist group did join his “broader Islamic army”.

The reports for some reason don’t discuss other reported links between Iraq and al-Qaida, but cautiously conclude: “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida co-operated on attacks against the United States.”

So there were links between Saddam and al-Qaida, not to mention other terrorists, but no proof (yet) of active collaboration or co-operation in the September 11 attacks.

This is almost word for word what Bush has long said.

“We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11th,” he repeated on CNN last year. But there was evidence “that he has been involved with al-Qaida”.

Yet ABC TV news said this week’s reports prove al-Qaida “had no links with Saddam Hussein, as suggested by the White House”, and ABC’s The World Today added: “One of the Bush administration’s central arguments for going to war with Iraq appears to be in tatters.” As if Bush had blamed Iraq for the September 11 attacks. The liar.

More of this and al-Nashami can take it easy. We’ll have cut our own throats already.

Ouch.