Wednesday's revelation by a US commission investigating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks bluntly undermined the Bush administration's justification for waging war in Iraq.

In a report outlining the history of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network, the commission explicitly stated no credible evidence has been found that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein aided al-Qaida attempts to target the United States.

Bin Laden did make overtures to Saddam for assistance, according to the report, as he did with leaders in Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere as he sought to build an Islamic army.

But his efforts apparently never came to fruition.

While Saddam dispatched a senior Iraqi intelligence official to Sudan to meet with bin Laden in 1994, the commission said it had not turned up evidence of a "collaborative relationship."

The Bush administration has long cited alleged links between Saddam and al-Qaida as a principal reason for last year's invasion of Iraq.

Even this week, the White House has not yielded an inch in defense of its justification for the war against a sovereign state without endorsement from the United Nations.

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney staunchly reiterated pre-war arguments that the ousted Iraqi leader "had long-established ties with al-Qaida," which represented a grievous threat to the US.

Now the commission has proved the opposite.

"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States," it revealed in the staff report.

"There is no convincing evidence that any government financially supported al-Qaida before 9/11 -- other than limited support provided by the Taliban after bin Laden first arrived in Afghanistan," it added.

The report was issued as the bipartisan commission embarked on two days of public hearings into the September 11 attacks. The panel intends to issue a final report in July on the worst terrorist incident in American history.

As the Iraq connection long suggested by administration officials gained no plausibility in the report, it is likely the Bush team will face more backlash both at home and abroad.

The central tenet of the administration's empty argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the main reason to justify the invasion, stirred worldwide criticism that Washington may have exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq and concocted the intelligence concerning alleged Iraqi WMD in order to win support for military action.

Worse, the Bush team insisted without evidence -- yet treated as a proven fact -- that Saddam Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists.

The truth is the United States used the threat of Iraqi WMD and a connection to al-Qaida as justification for launching the war against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The United States would do itself and the world a huge favor by establishing a closer relationship with reality rather than wrestling with its own version of the truth, as the international credibility of American military intelligence is simply of zero value.

(China Daily June 18, 2004)