From this Wall Street Journal editorial:
What do you all think?
I think that finding the name of a medium level officer in the Fedayeen whom (the article acknowledges) has no established connection to Hussein and who might have been acting on his own Islamist impulses and whom (the article acknowledges) may not even be the same person, but simply someone with a shared name, does not go very far toward “establishing” an Iraq-al Qaida connection.
Maybe they should wait until there is actual evidence of a connection?
Real evidence would be trumpeted by this Administration in a prime-time press conference event, not sneaked around the back door in an editorial.
I’ll wait until I see this in straight news reports from other sources.
I think this part of the editorial is particularly strange, in fact almost funny, but not quite.
“We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect. It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever–that ‘secular’ Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn’t mix. But John Ashcroft’s press conference yesterday reminds us that the terror threat remains, and it seems especially irresponsible for journalists not to be open to new evidence. If the CIA was wrong about WMD, couldn’t it have also missed Saddam’s terror links?”
They got all the buzz words, like “politically incorrect,” “article of faith among war opponents” in there. And a tortured tie was made between their editorial subject and Ashcroft’s news conference in which an unspecified threat was the subject. And what unspecified journalists are referred to as being not open to new evidence?
Following up on the Journal’s lead about the intelligence failures, if the CIA was wrong about WMD, couldn’t the information on which Ashcroft’s new conference was based also be wrong? He probably got it from the FBI whose crime lab misidentified some fingerprints and spread misinformation about a poor Oregon attorney all over the place.
It sounds to me like the Journal has some “articles of faith” of its own.
Saddam and 9/11? That’s even stupider than Saddam working with al Qaida.
People, Saddam’s regime and al Qaida had opposing ideologies and were actively engaged in killing and disempowering members of the other group.
Even if they were working together (and they absolutely could not have been) why the hell would Saddam want to kill random civilians half a world away? No advantages whatsoever would flow to Saddam, but a whole shitload of trouble would.
I’m just so sick of this load of horse crap.
The article says “One thing we’ve learned about Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein is that the former dictator was a diligent record keeper.”
Heh, we haven’t found any records indicating there were weapons of mass destruction, have we? Must be an oversight. Anyway, the previous three posters all have it. All but a few really hardcore people have given up on this ludicrous idea. Certainly the Bush administration has.
So what? Politics has always made for rather strange bedfellows. That’s why nearly half the Democrats in Georgia yesterday jumped ship to join Republicans in a failed (barely) attempt to ban gay marriage. Saddam and Bin Laden might have opposing ideologies, but there are possibly certain issues on which they agree, such as terrorizing the US.
If Osama can’t work with the Wahabi government in Saudi Arabia, can you really picture him working with Saddam? Publicly anyway, Bin Laden never had anything but condemnations for him.
Did you mean to say Queen Gertrude? 
I don’t find it totally unbelievable that one man in the Iraqi hierachy MAY have visited a meeting of anti-Western sentiment while in Malaysia. But I need to hear a lot more. I’d be interested to know what’s meant by an “Al Qaeda meeting”, too. If there was a lecture by an AQ guy, or an AQ sympathizer, then several thousand gullible young men in the Muslim world “have links to Al Qaeda”.
I mean, I’ve been to rallies where, among others, a Free Mumia guy spoke. Doesn’t mean I support the cause, he was just on the roster.
Hmm. Seems to be consensus. What bothers me are the folks trumpeting this editorial as outright PROOF of Saddam’s direct involvement in 9/11 (either from not reading the article or having an agenda). If no one in the Administration contradicts this, I know it’ll live forever as further proof of a liberal media conspiracy to hide pro-Bush news.
To bring this back on topic, how do you think this will develop, if at all? Will it be used for political gain? Or will the lack of “there” there make it fizzle before that can happen?
By the same token, both al Quaeda and Bush hated Saddam so maybe they got together and planned 9/11 for the sole purpose of beginning a war in Iraq. All the poor planning by the US was done on purpose to make it look like they were trying to do good but was specifically designed to end with the US leaving Iraq and opening the door for Islamic radicals taking over…
Well, there are a couple of threads on this atm, so its getting kind of tired I think. There simply isn’t enough evidence here to warrent a re-evaluation of the situation. Perhaps if more comes to light…
However, I have a question for lambchops:
You make it sound like the two groups were actively at war with each other. To my knowledge this wasn’t the case, that they had more of an uneasy truce. What active engagement are you talking about here between Iraq and AQ?
-XT
That some conservatives are really desperate to advance any weak and silly argument they can to try to give some credence to the lies Bush used to support this ridiculous war.
How will this develop? Exactly like the “proof of WMD” sarin residue shell explosion. The Republicans will jump up on their desks and do a little jig and start getting out the party hats and champagne, get drunk, pass out, wake up the next morning, mumble something to themselves, and shirk off into the distance in shame again.
I have no doubt that in theory Saddam supported Al Queda. And, since it is/was chic around his circles to hate the USA and Isreal, he also likely gave them (im) moral support. He was known to give other terrorist groups financial & other support. But it seems Osama & Saddam didn’t get along either. They had the same enemies, but I don’t think they could be called allies. I doubt if we’ll find that Saddam actively supported 9-11 or knew any details. OTOH, if we found out that SH had been told that AQ had “planned a major strike against the Great Satan”, or even if we found some cash support, it wouldn’t shock me.
Sorry for being late to get back to this one, haven’t been about for a couple of days.
In this case, it’s not a question of two entities (Iraq and al Qaeda) fighting each other, but of each of the entities fighting against an ideological group which included the other entity. That is, the Iraq government was actively engaged in fighting Islamists, and al Qaeda was actively engaged in fighting despotic secular regimes in the Middle East. This is what I mean when I talk about “actively fighting against the other group” - warfare against the other’s type. There is little evidence for a direct battle between Iraq and al Qaeda, though there are direct battles between Iraq and al Qaeda-linked groups, because al Qaeda is more of a loose alliance and supplier of cash than an actual fighting force. There are also many explicit stated condemnations. Similarly, there is no evidence for any kind of truce.
Iraq was actively engaged in fighting many Islamist groups and groups which used Islam as a rallying call against the secular government, including IMIK (Kurdish Islamists, the parent group of Ansar al-Islam, which is supposed to be linked with al-Zawahri), SCIRI (Shiite Islamists, backed by Iran), the IIP (a small Islamist party, Sunni I believe), the Komali Islami (Islamists, Kurdish roots) and certain charismatic clerics with personal followings and some party affiliations, including Muhammed Sadiq al-Sadr (father of the al-Sadr in the news at the moment, though his party, al-Da’awa, was less than Islamist) and Muhammed Baqir al-Hakim. The British Home Office (see Asylum in the UK section) gives good info, if a little out-of-date.
Al Qaeda-related groups have attacked, with the stated aim of destablising their secular governments, in Saudi Arabia (their main target), Jordan, Turkey, Tunisia and possibly Egypt (excluding their various attacks against US interests in Kenya, Yemen and the US itself). The Iraqi government has always been under attack by Islamist groups, but I do not know the extent of their relationship with al Qaeda.
Hope this is as clear as it can be.
I think that a well educated individual, in possession of high intellect and brilliant imagination will believe just about anything in defence of Bush and company.
What are these ‘sources’? Chalabi aides? WSJ used them too.