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Osama and Saddam, Yet Again

For many months now, a debate has raged about the possibility of links between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. I doubt that this debate will be ended any time soon, but I do think that the evidence offered up till now has been tenuous and speculative at best; if such a formal link had been documented in the days leading up to the US invasion, it would have impacted considerably on my own views of that campaign, even if it would never have altered my opposition to nation building as a foreign policy goal. In this regard, I share much with the 2000 Presidential Campaign Candidate, George W. Bush

In response to a Weekly Standard piece written by Stephen Hayes, who has published a new book on the subject of "The Connection," I've written a number of brief posts (see, for example, here, here and here), and have read a lot of very interesting literature, both pro and con (see, for example, here, here, and here).

It now seems, however, that the 9/11 Commission, which has access to many confidential, classified documents, has declared, finally, that there was no operational link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

I don't think anyone has denied that there were talks between various individuals connected to Al Qaeda and the Ba'athist regime in Iraq. But these talks never materialized into any kind of formal, "collaborative relationship," like, say, that between the Taliban and Bin Laden's thugs.

A Hussein regime, in possession of WMDs, and in a "collaborative relationship" with Al Qaeda, would have been a threat to the security of the United States, in my opinion, meriting some kind of action. That Hussein possessed neither WMDs nor a cozy relationship with Bin Laden fortifies further my judgment that this war was an unnecessary and deeply troubling drain on national security resources at a time when Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-ism marches on.

Unfortunately, the situation in Iraq now makes US extrication impossible, practically speaking, insofar as the structural institutionalization of the US presence will not be challenged by either George W. Bush or his potential successor, John Kerry. Worse still, the "magnet theory" has failed: Al Qaeda may have been drawn into Iraq to do battle with the American "infidels," as the Bush administration predicted, but it has not departed from anywhere else on the planet; from Madrid to Riyadh, from Cleveland, Ohio to Brooklyn, New York, its minions continue to conspire. This "War on Terrorism" has many chapters left, and the outcome is by no means certain.

Posted on Thursday, June 17, 2004 at 9:52 AM | Comments (15) | Return

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