[link|http://www.slate.com/id/2143611/|Slate]. He covers some of the circumstantial evidence that some al Qaeda operatives were in Iraq before the invasion. He writes:

It is customary to dismiss evidence of this kind with a brisk and pseudo-knowing sneer about the "secular" nature of Saddam's regime and thus its presumed incompatibility with theocratic fanatics. Quite how this CIA-sponsored "analysis" has survived this long is beyond me. At least from the time of its conclusion of hostilities with Iran, Baghdad became a center of jihadist propaganda and sponsorship. Saddam himself started to be painted and photographed wearing the robes of an imam. He began a gigantic mosque-building program. He financed the suicide-murderers who worked against the more secular PLO. He sent money to the Muslim separatists in the Philippines. His closest regional ally was the theocracy in Sudan, which had been the host of Osama Bin Laden. (You can see a similar process at work with the other "secular" Baathist regime in Syria: It has long had very warm ties to the mullahs in Iran and to Hezbollah, and in its current and one hopes terminal phase, is forbidding all non-regime propaganda except the Islamist type.)

[...]

A suggestive new document from this trove [[link|http://70.168.46.200/|linky]] has now been [link|http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199052,00.html|uncovered and analyzed] [Fox News link] by Ray Robison, a former staffer on David Kay's Iraq Survey Group. It details a meeting in Baghdad between Fazlur Rahman, a major Pakistani cleric and Taliban sympathizer, and Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam's vice president and chief party enforcer. Fazlur Rahman seeks and receives sympathy, brings a message of goodwill from Mullah Omar, and requests Iraqi help in mediating between the Taliban, Northern Alliance, and the Russians in Afghanistan. Though some of the conversation is opaque and hard to decipher, it clearly shows that a friendly informal contact existed between the two regimes. (Unconfirmed reports allege that Vice President Ramadan also met with Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Baghdad in 1998.)

Unfortunately for the advocates, the document cited isn't terribly clear evidence for either side. It's clear there were contacts between Iraq's government and some al Qaeda types, but it's not clear that Iraq ever gave them any meaningful support. The September 11 Commission report found [link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47812-2004Jun16?language=printer|no connection] between Saddam and al Qadea. It's not clear that the recently declassified article was used in making that conclusion, but I have to assume that it was.

While there's no strong evidence of support, I do find it interesting that in the [link|http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/aqmanual.pdf|al Qaeda Training Manual] (140 page .pdf) it says (p.10):

The young men returning to Allah realized that Islam is not just performing rituals but a complete system: Religion and government, worship and Jihad [holy war], ethics and dealing with people, and the Koran and sword. The bitter situation that the nation has reached is a result of its divergence from Allah's course and his righteous law for all places and times. That [bitter situation] came about as a result of its children's love for the world, their loathing of death, and their abandonment of Jihad [holy war].

Unbelief is still the same. It pushed Abou Jahl- may Allah curse him - and-Kureish's valiant infidels to battle the-prophet - God bless and keep him - and to torture his companions - may Allah's grace be on them. It is the same unbelief that drove Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, Gadhafi, Hafez Assad, Saleh, Fahed - Allah's curse be upon the non-believing leaders - and all the apostate Arab rulers to torture, kill, imprison, and torment Moslems. These young men realized that an Islamic government would never be established except by the bomb and rifle. Islam does not coincide or make a truce with unbelief, but rather confronts it.

The confrontation that Islam calls for with these godless and apostate regimes, does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun.

Emphasis added.

Why isn't Saddam listed there specifically?

Saddam was apparently most fearful of the Shia majority, not America. Him taking on the trappings of religion may have been more a result of internal pressures rather than an attempt to immunize himself with al Qaeda. I don't know when the al Qaeda manual was written and how it fit in the timeline with Saddam's mosque-building.

[link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarqawi|Wikipedia] article on Zarqawi has some more details about him. It mentions some of the things that Hitchens cites, but says there's no strong evidence or that others deny that the various things happened. It is hard to believe, though, that Zarqawi could get medical care in Baghdad without Saddam's regime knowing about it. Perhaps, though, like Saddam's payments to families of Palestinian suicide bombers, he regarded it as a low-risk strategy.

Like much of history, it looks like there isn't going to be enough information to disprove claims of a significant connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, so arguments about it will continue for a long time.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.