please issue a correction to your story above:
you state above: “Presumably the recently released Pentagon study that found extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agents and al Qaeda came out after this Frontline series was put to bed. But there is no reason to think Frontline, like most of the American media, wouldn’t just have reported the “no direct operational links” part.”
this is wrong. from the Pentagon: “A Pentagon-sponsored study of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the 2003 invasion shows that no direct operation link existed between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. The study of the documents reportedly was completed last year by a federally funded think tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses. see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88154003
