It tells me Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

I have answered this question before and I guess I will have to answer it again and again.

Just because you think GWB said Iraq had a part in 9/11 and a majority of other people thought the same thing does not mean he said it.

I didn't hear him say it or anything that even implied it.

However Saddam did support terrorisim and had connections to Al Qaeda.

In the words of the favorite el pinko rag of the Bush haters club:

But the report of the commission's staff, based on its access to all relevant classified information, said that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation.

I think you believe Bush implied that they colaberated on 9/11.

You were probably influenced and mislead by statements like this from the arrogant asshole John F Kerry:

"The administration misled America, and the administration reached too far," Kerry told Michigan Public Radio. "I believe that the 9/11 report, the early evidence, is that they're going to indicate that we didn't have the kind of terrorists links that this administration was asserting. I think that's a very, very serious finding." Even though he said Hussein "supported and harbored terrorist groups."earlier

The point the WAPO was trying to make is there was no COLABORATIVE connection meaning Saddam and Al Qaeda did not plan any attacks on the US together, but they were connected and friendly.

You completely ignore the fact that Bush repeatedly denied there was a Saddam connection in statements such as this:
Speaking about Iraq's alleged links to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney connected Iraq to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by saying that newly found Iraqi intelligence files in Baghdad showed that a participant in the bombing returned to Iraq and "probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven." He added: "The Iraqi government or the Iraqi intelligence service had a relationship with al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s.

Shortly after Cheney asserted these links, Bush contradicted him [contradicted? another arrogant assertion by the lefty WAPO], saying: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th." But Bush added: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties."

You can read the entire article here arrogantly titled "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" even though the contents of the article admit there was a connection.

Star finds bin Laden-Iraq links
Three pages of documents point to the arrival of a messenger
Apr. 28, 2003.MITCH POTTER TORONTO STAR

Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization and Saddam Hussein's regime shared direct contact as early as 1998, according to top-secret Iraqi intelligence documents obtained by the Star.

The documents, discovered yesterday in the bombed-out headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's most feared intelligence service, amount to the first hard evidence of a link long suspected by the United States but dismissed as fiction by many Western leaders.

The handwritten file, three pages in all, relates to the arrival of a secret envoy sent by bin Laden to Iraq in March, 1998, apparently to establish a clandestine relationship with the Iraqi regime.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1051125568646&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

...Recall that Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the al-Qaeda bombers who hit the World Trade Center in 1993, fled to Iraq after that attack and lived there freely, reportedly with a government salary. That's one clear link to al-Qaeda....

http://husseinandterror.com/