Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC), who was picked to accompany President Bush at Fort Bragg yesterday -- instead of the shunned colleage Rep. Walter Jones, whose district is closer -- is now claiming to have special knowledge about Iraq and Al Quaeda that has eluded the rest of the world:

President Bush might continue to intimate that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the September 11th attacks, but Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC), the vice chairman of the House subcommittee on terrorism, is stating it explicitly. In an interview on CNN, Hayes insisted, "Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11." When confronted with the findings of the 9/11 commission - who definitively concluded there was no evidence of a link between Saddam and 9/11 - Hayes retorted, "I'm sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places." Hayes then defended his position by asserting that "legislators have access to evidence others do not."

We're not sure what kind of evidence Hayes has access to but apparently he has higher clearance than U.S. weapons inspectors, CIA directors, counterterrorism experts, Secretaries of State, and even the President ... because all those people have accepted the fact that Saddam was not connected to 9/11.

(Via Think Progress)