No Saddam link to Iraq al-Qaeda

[??????????]

The USA did not support the ideology of the Soviet Union yet we still backed them up during WW2. Our common enemy was the Nazis. The same can be applied to Saddam.

That makes little rational sense. So Saddam was a common enemy? With whom? Well there was one in fact; Iran and quite possibly Al Quaeda (Saddam was not religious enough for them, he was an old-school power crazed Arab nationalist) Now he's been removed, Iraq is now[i/] at long last, a porous base for Islamic extremists.

Saddams common enemy with Al Qaeda was of course the United states. It doesn't take much thought depth to figure THAT out. But of course I forget, most leftists don't like to deal with little things called "facts".

[Michael Z]

Thought i'd post this article here. I wonder what u guys' reactions to the senate report are.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5328592.stm

This just in - grass is green...

[Michael Z]

The USA did not support the ideology of the Soviet Union yet we still backed them up during WW2. Our common enemy was the Nazis. The same can be applied to Saddam.

That makes little rational sense. So Saddam was a common enemy? With whom? Well there was one in fact; Iran and quite possibly Al Quaeda (Saddam was not religious enough for them, he was an old-school power crazed Arab nationalist) Now he's been removed, Iraq is now[i/] at long last, a porous base for Islamic extremists.

Saddams common enemy with Al Qaeda was of course the United states. It doesn't take much thought depth to figure THAT out. But of course I forget, most leftists don't like to deal with little things called "facts".

We do, but there's reading facts, and then there's analysing them. We prefer to do the latter. Unlike the right, we also read between the lines and don't take everything at frigging face value.

Saddam and Al Qaeda hated each other due to Saddam's staunchly secular policies (which, lest we forget, partly caused the war in Iran and made him a "useful ally" in the 80s, just the same way the secular regimes in Egypt and Uzbekistan are now), so there's no way they would have worked together. Saddam was a vicious tyrant (he was basically a crime lord who also happened to be running a country) but he did not share Al Qaeda's vision of a holy Caliphate where women are forced to wear burkas and public beheadings make up for our only source of entertainment. In fact, Baghdad was traditionally the seat of the Caliph, so, if anything, Al Qaeda would dearly liked to have seen the back of him.

The WW2 analogy doesn't stick, either. The US and the USSR didn't share a deep-seated hatred of each other, and it was only during the McCarthy era that mutual suspicion and hatred surfaced. Seriously, it takes several leaps of logic to suggest that Al Qaeda and the Baathist Party will work together simply and solely because they both share a hatred of the US.

[Tender Branson]

The USA did not support the ideology of the Soviet Union yet we still backed them up during WW2. Our common enemy was the Nazis. The same can be applied to Saddam.

That makes little rational sense. So Saddam was a common enemy? With whom? Well there was one in fact; Iran and quite possibly Al Quaeda (Saddam was not religious enough for them, he was an old-school power crazed Arab nationalist) Now he's been removed, Iraq is now[i/] at long last, a porous base for Islamic extremists.

Saddams common enemy with Al Qaeda was of course the United states. It doesn't take much thought depth to figure THAT out. But of course I forget, most leftists don't like to deal with little things called "facts".

We do, but there's reading facts, and then there's analysing them. We prefer to do the latter.
Unlike the right, we also read between the lines and don't take everything at frigging face value.

Saddam and Al Qaeda hated each other due to Saddam's staunchly secular policies (which, lest we forget, partly caused the war in Iran and made him a "useful ally" in the 80s, just the same way the secular regimes in Egypt and Uzbekistan are now), so there's no way they would have worked together.

To back this up:

"Hamid Mir, bin Laden's Pakistani biographer, spoke to him in 1997: He condemned Saddam Hussein in my interview. He gave such kind of abuses that it was very difficult for me to write, [calling Hussein a] socialist motherf****er. [He said], "The land of the Arab world, the land is like a mother, and Saddam Hussein is f****ing his mother." He also explained that Saddam Hussein is against us, and he discourages Iraqi boys to come to Afghanistan.

In February 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, bin Laden released an audiotape in which he said, "Needless to say, this crusade war is primarily targeted against the people of Islam. Regardless of the removal or the survival of the socialist [Ba'th] party or Saddam, Muslims in general and the Iraqis in particular must brace themselves for jihad." Bin Laden went on to observe that "socialists are infidels," implying that Saddam was an apostate from Islam, the gravest charge bin Laden could make against a fellow Muslim."

http://www.peterbergen.com/bergen/articles/details.aspx?id=233

I think Michael means that by saying Al-Qaida and Saddam were "no friends."

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

On the eve of the invasion, bin Laden issued a statement. He said the conflict would be between "two great infidels" and said the Iraqi people should prevent it by rising up and removing Saddam and his "godless" regime.

[afleitch]

But of course I forget, most leftists don't like to deal with little things called "facts".

Come on Jeff, since when was I a 'leftist'?

[minionofmidas]

On the eve of the invasion, bin Laden issued a statement. He said the conflict would be between "two great infidels" and said the Iraqi people should prevent it by rising up and removing Saddam and his "godless" regime.

He had the right idea there.

[J. J.]

The WW2 analogy doesn't stick, either. The US and the USSR didn't share a deep-seated hatred of each other, and it was only during the McCarthy era that mutual suspicion and hatred surfaced. Seriously, it takes several leaps of logic to suggest that Al Qaeda and the Baathist Party will work together simply and solely because they both share a hatred of the US.

Good Lord, we didn't recognize the Soviet regime until the 1930's!!!  We deported a few thousand people there during the "Red Scare" of 1919-20!

The worry regarding an alliance between Al Qaeda and Iraq is the old middle east adage, "The enemy on my enemy is my friend."

[minionofmidas]

Ah, now it's the conservatives comparing Bush to Hitler. -_-

[Frodo]

I knew all this...four years ago. 

[MODU]

OMG . . . Kerry lied to us!!!

[Nym90]

The USA did not support the ideology of the Soviet Union yet we still backed them up during WW2. Our common enemy was the Nazis. The same can be applied to Saddam.

That makes little rational sense. So Saddam was a common enemy? With whom? Well there was one in fact; Iran and quite possibly Al Quaeda (Saddam was not religious enough for them, he was an old-school power crazed Arab nationalist) Now he's been removed, Iraq is now[i/] at long last, a porous base for Islamic extremists.

Saddams common enemy with Al Qaeda was of course the United states. It doesn't take much thought depth to figure THAT out. But of course I forget, most leftists don't like to deal with little things called "facts".

And the US and Saddam had a common enemy in Al Qaeda, so by that logic, we should've teamed up with Saddam to fight Al Qaeda.

I don't believe that, as I don't support the idea of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" except perhaps in very dire circumstances, but it is certainly something that could've been used as a strategy, just as we were willing to help the Mujahedeen agains the Soviets and to help Iraq against Iran.

[MODU]

A good article discussing the Senate report and the gaps within it:

"How Bad Is the Senate Intelligence Report?"

According to a report released September 8 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Saddam Hussein "was resistant to cooperating with al Qaeda or any other Islamist groups." It's an odd claim. Saddam Hussein's regime has a long and well-documented history of cooperating with Islamists, including al Qaeda and its affiliates.

As early as 1982, the Iraqi regime was openly supporting, training, and funding the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization opposed to the secular regime of Hafez Assad. For years, Saddam Hussein cultivated warm relations with Hassan al-Turabi, the Islamist who was the de facto leader of the Sudanese terrorist state, and a man Bill Clinton described as "a buddy of [Osama] bin Laden's."

Throughout the 1990s, the Iraqi regime hosted Popular Islamic Conferences in Baghdad, gatherings modeled after conferences Turabi hosted in Khartoum. Mark Fineman, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, attended one of the conferences and filed a story about his experience on January 26, 1993. "There are delegates from the most committed Islamic organizations on Earth," he wrote. "Afghan mujahedeen (holy warriors), Palestinian militants, Sudanese fundamentalists, the Islamic Brotherhood and Pakistan's Party of Islam." Newsweek's Christopher Dickey attended the same conference and wrote about it in 2002. "Islamic radicals from all over the Middle East, Africa, and Asia converged on Baghdad," he wrote, "to show their solidarity with Iraq in the face of American aggression. . . . Every time I hear diplomats and politicians, whether in Washington or the capitals of Europe, declare that Saddam 
Hussein is a 'secular Baathist ideologue' who has nothing to do with Islamists or terrorist calls to jihad, I think of that afternoon and I wonder what they're talking about. If that was not a fledgling Qaeda itself at the Rashid convention, it sure was Saddam's version of it."

(Cont...)

It is a lengthy article, but well worth the time to read.