"If we had a relationship with al Qaeda and if we believed in this relationship, we wouldn't be ashamed to admit it," Saddam said in a recent interview on British television. "The answer is no. We do not have any relationship with al Qaeda." (Source: CNN)

"The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaida) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war," said Cleland. "There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of bin Laden's terrorist followers ... What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends." (Source: UPI)

"We have found no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda," said Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the French judge who is the dean of the region's investigators after two decades fighting Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorists. "And we are working on 50 cases involving Al Qaeda or radical Islamic cells. I think if there were such links, we would have found them. But we have found no serious connections whatsoever." (Source: L.A. Times)

"We have never had information presented to us - even though we've asked questions - which would indicate that there is a direct link," said the monitoring group's chairman, Michael Chandler. "Nothing else is coming out, so far, to us, to indicate that there is an al-Qaeda Iraq connection," he said. (Source: Agence France-Presse)

"As far as I know, no proof has been found, or at least been made official, for a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda," said Chirac in an interview published in editions of a Beirut-based newspaper, L'Orient-Le Jour. (Source: International Herald Tribune)

"I absolutely deny that," Aziz told the British Broadcasting Corp. "Historically speaking, everybody in the region, everybody in the world knows Iraq has no connection with Al Qaeda. We are quite different people -- different in ideology, different in practice." (Source: Fox News Channel)

"With a smirk, Gore then added: "So when the bipartisan 9/11 commission issued its report finding 'no credible evidence' of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection, it should not have come as a surprise. It should not have caught the White House off guard." (Source: The Washington Post)