McClatchy, last seen reporting on the devastating impact declining violence has had on Iraqi gravediggers, nails what will be the liberal spin on a new report from a Pentagon-backed study which shows no “direct operational” connections between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda.

The problem, of course, is that “direct operational” connections don’t rule out indirect connections such as giving al Qaeda terrorists aid and tolerating al Qaeda’s existence within Iraq both of which happened under Saddam.  It also doesn’t mean that Saddam wasn’t supporting international Islamic terrorism in general, albeit not necessarily through al Qaeda:

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East , U.S. officials told McClatchy .

Al Qaeda is not the beginning and end of Islamic terrorism.  There are hundreds of Islamic terror groups out there, and that Saddam supported any of them at all is the important point to take away with this.

Saddam supported terrorism.  Period.  Trying to obfuscate that fact by saying he didn’t support al Qaeda “directly” is like saying that Charles Manson is an ok guy because child molestation didn’t happen to be among his crimes against society.

Also, McClatchy tries to spin this apparent lack of a “direct” connection between Saddam and al Qaeda into evidence against al Qaeda being in Iraq at all:

As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq . “The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims,” he said. . . .

Sen. John McCain , the presumptive GOP nominee, mocked Sen. Barack Obama , D-Ill, recently for saying that he’d keep some U.S. troops in Iraq if al Qaida established a base there.

“I have some news. Al Qaida is in Iraq ,” McCain told supporters.

Of course, the fact that al Qaeda is in Iraq now is the absolute truth.  Before his death by an American bomb, the most dangerous terrorist in Iraq was Abu Zarqawi, who ran a group called “al Qaeda in Iraq” and pledged his fealty to Osama bin Laden.  We can quibble about whether or not Saddam supported al Qaeda “directly” (again, he did support the group indirectly), but there’s no arguing against the fact that we’re fighting al Qaeda in Iraq now.

And precipitous withdrawal from Iraq now means handing the group a massive military and propaganda victory.