Quote:Saddam, is / was a terrorist.
My god, the subject of this thread is such an open ended question that it's impossible to answer it. But before we label Saddam as a terrorist, let's try to understand how America defines a terrorist:
Quote:http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/23/paige.terrorist.nea/
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" Monday as he argued that the country's largest teachers union often acts at odds with the wishes of rank-and-file teachers regarding school standards and accountability.
Quote:http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020205Coulter.html
Ann Coulter: "I can tell which ones don't need to be looked at, I can tell you that. Old ladies, old black men, little children, blondes, blue eyed. Do this experiment. I've done it many times: go around wherever you are, and you can always exclude about 80% of the people there, and I know once again Congressman Honda will not tell us the other factors that are going to be so crucial in figuring out which ones the terrorists are."
Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA): "You know there's another form of terrorism in the country, and that's the kind of terrorism that you spread. It's through racial profiling, and you're simply out of step."
Michael "The Moralist" Medved: "Congressman Honda, do you really want to compare Ann Coulter to the people who attacked the United States on September 11? ... You want to stand by your accusation that Ann Coulter is a terrorist?"
Honda: "Her comments and everything else engenders fear in people, it creates fear in people and it brings up other people who are out of step who will listen to that and turn around and target other people and were about educating people about what's the best way of proceeding and misinformation and using race as the soul ingredient is out of step."
-- The Michael Medved Show, March 18, 2002
I could argue that the Israeli government is just as much a sponsor of terrorism as Saddam. Afterall, who paid those Israeli soldiers and pilots who had already bombed and shot THOUSANDS of innocent Palestinians? And didn't Saddam give the money to the families only AFTER they lost their sons or daughters in a suicide bombing?
Why is it that Saddam was NOT considered a terrorist when he gassed his own people back in 83 when Cheney and the first Bush looked the other way?
Why was China never considered a terrorist nation for killing hundreds, if not thousands, of THEIR own people during the democratic uprisings at Tianamen Square (sp?).
If Saddam is a terrorist and was developing chemical weapons as far back as '91, why didn't he use them on Israel during the first Gulf War? And let's not forget why we went after Saddam in '91. It wasn't because of WMD's.
Why does the Bush administration hardly talk about the most horrible terrorist of them all, bin Laden? Wasn't Bush hellbent on capturing him dead or alive?
According to the rightwing nutjobs like Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and many other neoconservatives, just about EVERYBODY who doesn't agree with this failed administration is considered either a Saddam apologist or terrorist sympathesizer.
And this all basically belies the point McGentrix tries to make in this thread (if there is one).
It's impossible to answer this question, really, but it's entertaining to watch those who will try.
Bush and his cronies have had just as much of a "connection" to 9/11 by their complicit acts of obvuscating, as much as possible, the potential for a clear and thorough vetting of the events leading up to, during, and after 9/11.