Those who think Saddam was not a threat, do not understand what the threat regarding Islamic Fundamentalist was around the world. Al-Queda is a "name" terrorist organizations go by several different names. That is the facts that get lost when the Bush-haters who say he "lied" don't seem to want to face. The world is dangerous, and Saddam in power was a threat to the world and the US. He was always at war with us. He NEVER abided by the ceasefire agreement after the 1st Gulf war and NEVER would have.. This is not something that began with GWB and will not end anytime shortly...
===========================
http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2004/jul/joynerJul04.asp
While links between Saddam and al Qaeda are long established, evidence of Saddam's involvement in the 9-11 attacks has always been sketchy at best. The most compelling case has always rested on a meeting between 9-11 planner Mohammed Atta and Iraqi case officer al-Ani. At least one expert went so far as to argue that Atta received $100,000 that "probably funded at least part of the September 11 operation[17]." The 9-11 Commission, as detailed in a separate report, "Outline of the 9-11 Plot," now believes that meeting never took place:
We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9. Based on the evidence available-including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting-we do not believe that such a meeting occurred. The FBI's investigation places him in Virginia as of April
4, as evidenced by this bank surveillance camera shot of Atta withdrawing $8,000 from his account. Atta was back in Florida by April 11, if not before. Indeed, investigation has established that, on April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call Florida phone numbers from cell sites within Florida. We have seen no evidence that Atta ventured overseas again or re-entered the United States before July, when he traveled to Spain and back under his true name[18].
There is little credible evidence that Saddam directly funded the 9-11 attacks. Given that the United States has occupied Iraq for over a year and that our intelligence agencies have had nearly three years to uncover such evidence, it is quite likely that there was no such connection. Nonetheless, we know that Saddam funded Islamist terrorists. We know that his government had significant and repeated contact with al Qaeda during the 1990s. Still, Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi recently told Tom Brokaw that he thinks otherwise:
Brokaw: I know that you and others like you are grateful for the liberation of Iraq. But can't you understand why many Americans feel that so many young men and women have died here for purposes other than protecting the United States?
Allawi: We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York. And - the war have been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists. Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism.
Brokaw: Prime minister, I'm surprised that you would make the connection between 9-11 and the war in Iraq. The 9-11 commission in America says there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists of al-Qaeda.
Allawi: No. I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaeda. And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism. Now, whether he is directly connected to the September - atrocities or not, I can't - vouch for this. But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists[19].
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently asserted that his intelligence service had warned the U.S. several times that Saddam has planned terror attacks on U.S. targets inside and outside the country[20]. The timing of the claim struck many as politically motivated and no mention has been made of it since.
Overall, evidence for cooperation between Saddam and al Qaeda after the late 1990's is sketchier, with most pointing to Saddam's housing of Iraqi terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the most definitive link. Peter Bergen argues that the evidence that Zarqawi is much more likely a bin Laden rival than part of his network, making that basis rather dubious[21].
Whether al-Zarqawi is a member of al Qaeda or a rival faction is essentially a semantic debate. As terrorism expert Steve Emerson explains, the Islamist terrorist threat is singular; the particular name associated with a faction hardly matters:
The dream of a world under Islam has engendered Muslim dissidents everywhere in the world over the last two decades. Almost every Islamic country has its own militant faction, often two or three. The Hamas of Palestine, Hizballah of Lebanon, the Islamic Salvation Fron (FIS) and Armed Islamic Group (GIA) of Algeria, An-Nahda of Tunisia, Al Jihad and al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya of Egypt, Lashkar e-Tayyiba of Pakistan, and the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines and the Holy Warriors in Chechnya-all share the same goal of an Islamic world, or, as they refer to it, a Khilafah[22]."
Jason Burke, writing in the May/June Foreign Policy, goes further, noting,
The Arabic word qaeda can be translated as a "base of operation" or "foundation," or alternatively as a "precept" or "method." Islamic militants always understood the term in the latter sense. In 1987, Abdullah Azzam, the leading ideologue for modern Sunni Muslim radical activists, called for al-qaeda al-sulbah (a vanguard of the strong). He envisaged men who, acting independently, would set an example for the rest of the Islamic world and thus galvanize the umma (global community of believers) against its oppressors. It was the FBI-during its investigation of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa-which dubbed the loosely linked group of activists that Osama bin Laden and his aides had formed as "al Qaeda." This decision was partly due to institutional conservatism and partly because the FBI had to apply conventional antiterrorism laws to an adversary that was in no sense a traditional terrorist or criminal organization.
It is not simply a matter of these groups having similar goals. A key component of Osama bin Laden's strategy was to refocus the energy of existing Islamist factions outward, against the US and other Western interests, instead of at their host governments, under the rationale "if the US is beheaded, the Arab Kingdoms will wither away[24]."
In the 1980s and most of the 1990s, the ambitions of Sunni Islamist insurgent and terrorist organization were overwhelmingly aimed against individual nations. The Egyptian groups wanted to overthrow the Sadat and Mubarak regimes, the Algerians wanted to destroy the secular government in Algiers, the Aghans wanted their country back from the Soviet and Afghan Communists, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Abu Sayyaf wanted Mindanao for an independent Islamic homeland in the Philippines, and some of the Kashmiris wanted an independent nation, not an entity that would be folded into Pakistan. All the groups fought in the name of Allah . . . but their goals were nation specific; they did not conceive or claim, at this stage, that they were fighting to restore the freedom and dignity of the ummah, the borderless worldwide Muslim community. That would come later, after the defeat of what the Koran described as the "near enemy[25]."
The first groups he targeted, successfully, were al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya (IG) and Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) in Egypt. This coalition, which had its roots in the Afghan resistance, was multi-ethnic and went well beyond the Arab Middle East.
While bin Ladin was the lead signer of the 23 February 1998 fatwah,"Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," it was issued in the name of the World Islamic Front and co-signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri of EIJ; Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha of the IG; Mir Hamzah, of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan; and Fazlur Rahman of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh. The jihadist groups that Osama bin Laden has funded, trained, worked with, or is otherwise involved span the entire Muslim world, including Sunnis and Shia and several non-Arab states. Among the many parts of this loose alliance are: Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and Islamic Salvation Front; Egypt's IG and EIJ; Mohammed's Army in Jordan; Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and MILF in the Philippines; Chechen insurgents in Russia; Pakistan's Harakat al-Mujahadin (HUM); Islamic Army of Aden (IAA) in Yemen; Jeemah Islamiyah (JI) in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Southern Philippines; Mujaheddin e Khalq (MeK)-which was founded in Iran but based in Iraq starting in 1987; United Front for the Liberation of Western Somalia (UF), itself consisting of several constitutent groups; and groups in Fiji, West Bengal, Malaya, Mauritania, Bangladesh, Jordan, and Eritrea[27].
Several of the more radical Palestinian separatist groups, including several that Saddam actively sponsored, were trained by al Qaeda in the 1990's, according to Anonymous:
All the events fit the pattern bin Laden has established for his war, all contribute to the same goal. In this content, by 1996 bin Laden's worldwide insurgency against the Crusaders was well under way. . . . By the middle of bin Laden's stay, the EIJ; the IG; HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement); the Palestine Islamic Jihad; the ANO; several Algerian, Libyan, and Tunisian groups; the Eritrean Islamic Jihad; groups of Ethiopian, Ugandan, and Somali Islamists; and Lebanese Hizballah-among others-were in Khartoum[28].
The New York Times' Thom Shanker recently reported that, "Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq[29]."
Obviously, Saddam was no Islamist. Saddam supported these groups, not because he believed in their cause-indeed, they would likely have turned on him at some point-but because doing so bolstered his standing in the Arab world and harmed his enemies, especially the Americans. Similarly, while he undoubtedly despised Saddam for his secularism and ribald lifestyle, bin Laden has a long history of cooperating with nominal Muslims--and even the hated Russians--to further his long-term aims. In war, the enemy of my enemy is often my friend.
