Cheney admits Iraq had no link to 9/11

Call it a "known unknown."

That's what a former Pentagon chief famously called such knowns.

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney today disavowed intelligence he once invoked to suggest that Saddam Hussein collaborated with Al Qaeda to stage 9/11, reports Bloomberg.

"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Mr. Hussein] was involved in 9/11," Mr. Cheney told an audience gathered for lunch at the National Press Club in Washington. "We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true."

For years, Cheney has been criticized for failing to dismiss the possible link between Hussein and 9/11, even though members of 9/11 commission found "no credible evidence" of such a connection.

Do Cheney's latest comments destroy a key bulwark in the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq? Au contraire, suggests the former Veep.

“There was a relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. That’s not something I made up,” Cheney said.

His point was that the intelligence did show a connection between Hussein and Al Qaeda, even if Hussein's government had no link whatsoever to 9/11.