Remember a couple weeks ago when the 9-11 Commission reiterated the fact that there’s no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda? At the time, Dick Cheney reiterated his claims (which led to a looong semantic argument about the words “relationship” and “ties”). It seemed clear that if Cheney was correct, then it must be because he had evidence that the 9-11 Commission wasn’t privy to. Well, we can put that theory to bed as well :

The Sept. 11 commission, which reported no evidence of collaborative links between Iraq and al Qaeda, said on Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney had no more information than commission investigators to support his later assertions to the contrary.

The 10-member bipartisan panel investigating the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington said it reached its conclusion after reviewing available transcripts of Cheney’s public remarks on the subject.

The vice president has asserted long-standing links between the former Iraqi president and Osama Bin Laden’s Islamist militant network.

“The 9-11 Commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9-11 attacks,” the commission said in a statement.

It’ll be interesting to see how the White House tries to spin their way out of this one. My guess is that it’ll resemble this exchange.