So who's right on Iraq?

Although no one accuses Chicago's Fr. Andrew Greeley of being an expert on middle eastern affairs, he claims to know enough to judge that President Bush is lying about Iraq's significance in the war on terrorism. Writes Greeley in a Chicago Sun-Times opinion piece:

There is not and never has been any evidence that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attack. None. The implication of such involvement was an attempt to deceive, a successful attempt at the big lie.

I'm not sure that the president knows it is a lie, however.

Also, the weapons of mass destruction story was never true. It now appears that Saddam panicked in 1995 when his sons-in-law defected to Jordan and revealed the truth about his weapons development. He immediately ordered the destruction of all the evidence. The U.N. team before the war would have no more found any weapons than the Americans after the war.

One wishes that Greeley and Stephen Hayes could be brought together in the same room to hash out what the truth of the matter is. Either the evidence is there or it's not. The rest of us would like to know for sure.