There was absolutely not "no connection"

What the Pentagon Report Missed:

"The report utterly demolishes the myth that Saddam Hussein, a “secular dictator,” would never work with radical Islamists. The report contains a wealth of information demonstrating that Saddam Hussein was in touch with nearly every Islamist terrorist group in the Middle East and that his intelligence services had standing orders to monitor and reach out to any group of significance. That includes factions of Fatah, Hamas, the Army of Mohammed, and even Iran’s favorite terror group, Hezboallah. Of course, Hussein also worked with a number of Al-Qaeda proxies. Claudia Rossett has a good summary here. But the bigger point remains unnoticed: secular socialist Saddam did work with Islamist terrorists, despite their “ideological differences.”

A pretty exhaustive review of what the MSM glossed over for their own sake....