Al-Qaeda and Iraq, No Cooperation
March 28th, 2006 | by Paul Merda |I am no Middle-East expert, but Peter Bergen is. In this NYT Op-ed he demolishes the myth that Iraq and al-Qaeda worked together on 9/11 by examining recently released Iraqi documents. He also neatly dispatches the claim that the two were cooperating at any level; as if an Islamo-Fascist and a Secularist have common goals. But what are our right-wing countrymen doing? Holding out hope that the newly released documents will give them one single shred of evidence, just a scrap, so they can say Dear Leader was right all along. For that, they will search in vain . . . .
2 Responses to “Al-Qaeda and Iraq, No Cooperation”
By Tom Harper on Mar 28, 2006 | Reply
According to Dick Cheney, Saddam Hussein and a high-level al Qaeda official met in Prague sometime before 9/11. Cheney keeps “proving” this fact by saying “it’s never been refuted.”
I never knew it was so easy to prove something. I can run a mile in less than 3 minutes and I do the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen. This has never been refuted.
By John Rogers on Mar 28, 2006 | Reply
Well, I don’t think anyone believes Saddam was behind ‘911.
But I know that the documents have shattered one of the comforting myths of the pre-war debate: that secular Saddam would never dirty his hands dealing with Islamists of Al Qaeda.
He gave them advice, shelter, weapons and funding.
Saddam was not behind the terrorists of 911. But he was behind the terror of the region.
I do not regret deposing him. Had we not, we would have eventually had to end the sherade of the “oil For Food,” the trade embargo and the weekly aerial engagements above the No Fly Zones.
And we know - once again from those documents - that Saddam had no intention of playing nice when we did. He planned to rebuild his WMD arsenal.
In his own words: “the WMD are our minds.”
Do you ever wonder why Saddam had a team of scientists working on an obscure disease: Crimean Hemorhagghic Fever?
Was he trying to find a cure for disease taht hasn’t killed anyone in a century?