Key Findings- What Are They?

As if to illustrate my point below, the BBC's list of 'key findings' from the 9/11 Commission is instructive for the one, final, crucial point they make below the 'How It Happened' subheading.

This is that 'There was no operational link between al-Qaeda and ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.'

I think this would surely be better put in terms that they had not uncovered an operation on which Al Qaeda had cooperated with Saddam (and to the pernickety it's also intriguing that it is put so starkly in relation to 'Saddam'. Do they mean that at the lower reaches of Saddam's regime there may have been such collaboration?). Certainly there ought to be another 'key point' in the BBC report, in fact there should be several, according to this report:

a)'The report... said Iraq had sporadic contacts with bin Laden's group in the years before the airborne assault on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon that left nearly 3000 people dead.'

and

b)'The panel's final report added a tantalising qualifier to a staff document last month that found no "collaborative relationship," suggesting at one point that Iraq may have offered to harbor al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.'

At last! A definition of 'collaboration' that makes sense of all the equivocating about Iraq's ties with Al Qaeda: to 'collaborate' you not only have to offer to harbour the leader of Al Qaeda, he has to accept too.