Let's see
-no WMDs
-no Saddam/aQaeda link =
------------
no neo-loonies on the federal payroll
no Bush to kick around around anymore either
+ the republic restored

Hehe. I guess it depends on how we define "ream". Let's see, we have a tape of bin Laden calling for Saddam's overthrow, some al Qaeda guy vacationed in Iraq, hmm, well, there you have it.

Of course, going by those two pieces of "evidence", the US is *really* in cahoots with al Qaeda.

Bill, it's okay. Wait before you come up with a response that'll just bring more laughter on this end. Think about this.

Saddam is evil. Bin Laden is evil. Just because the two of them didn't work together doesn't lessen the evil nature of either of them. Nor does the fact that Saddam didn't have a WMD program. Please read your post a few down about the pre-US conditions at Abu Graib. Saddam is evil and he ran an evil regime. These other things would be icing on a nasty cake if they existed, but, well, they don't.

Might as well get a start on getting over it now; one year with no al Qaeda links and no WMD probably means things aren't going to change anytime soon...

shh,

I had to break out my moveon.org kook translator for that one.

MC,

I understand your emotional investment in Bush's loss in November but it defies logic to think that the old axiom "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" does not apply here. Here's multiple links documenting Saddam/Al Qaida ties:

http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200406030932.asp

http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/004/167gwjtp.asp

And a bonus link w/ UN evidence of Saddam's WMDs.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6705

Bottom line - history books will include information about the collaboration between OBL and Saddam. I suspect you know this but you're willing to say otherwise if it means anybody but Bush in the White House come January. It won't work. The first rule of politics is "you can't beat somebody with nobody."

Lance

The comment first entered here has been moved to the main post as an UPDATE to the main post.

How many more geniuses are out there who make me out to be a lefty? Step forward, and wipe up the drool trail behind you before someone slips in it.

If Bush loses, it won't be for lack of my vote. I like the guy.

But we need to face it, Saddam a) had no WMD program last year and b) had no ties to al Qaeda. If an al Qaeda operative being in Baghdad counts as a "link", then the US is linked to al Qaeda, also. Think about it.

Again, Lance, get over it. Seriously. Was Saddam one good deed away from the Eagle Scout badge, but the WMD thing blew it for him? No. It's not even relevant.

You guys have allowed "The Left(R)" to define this argument and drag you into their territory where they've beat you to a bloody pulp. Think about it. We don't need a reason to kill Saddam Hussein, yet because of attacks from The Left, you've felt the need to defend this operation based on WMD and al Qaeda links.

There's no need to. Just ignore it. And come to grips with the facts surrounding the situation.

MC,

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on Saddam/Al Qaida linkage, but "beat[en] to a bloody pulp?" Maybe in the dwindling world of Jayson Blair/Stephen Glass print media, but I'd say we're more than holding our own in the registered voter oriented new media.

"Agree to disagree"? Look, we're dealing with facts here, not opinions. Until someone comes up with credible evidence (sorry, Bill, one guy here or there isn't anywhere near credible), it hasn't happened.

A year ago bin Laden was still calling for the overthrow of Saddam's government. Why is that fact ignored? Saddam is a non-Muslim who ran the only secular government in that area. Bin Laden doesn't play with those cats.

Bill, I would recommend that you spend a little time learning about bin Laden; it'll start to make a bit more sense then.

Michael,

1. Since when do you consider every word from bin Laden to be the honest truth? Perhaps bin Laden called for the overthrow of Saddam as a misdirection play. He didn't want the U.S. to invade Iraq and plant democracy there. So he calls for the ouster of Saddam, knowing that will cause some to oppose the war on the grounds that it might open the door to a civil war that could lead to a bin ladenite successor to Saddam, which no one outside of Islamist-wacko-jihadist-nutball circles wants. Since when do you consider every word from bin Laden to be the honest truth?

2. In the indictment of bin laden for the African embassy bombings, the Clinton justice department asserted that al Qaeda and Saddam's regime had agreed to work together on weapons development. Obviously, they had somoe evidence that caused them to assert that.

3. Saddam wasn't a Muslim? Really? That's big news! What was he? Jewish? Hah. Of course he was a Muslim. Not an especially observant one, I'll grant you, but he was a Muslim. Oh, and he was becoming increasingly aligned with fundamentalists as his country crumbled and his regime was increasingly isolated. He was cozying up to the Islamists more and more, and funding a wave of mosque-building and that alone made him more and more of a threat. Add in the known Al Qaeda ties, including Zarqawi, Ramzi Yousef and Ansar al Islam, and his permissive tolerance of Islamist terrorists in general - housing and medical treatment for Abu Nidal, the terrorist training camp (complete with fuselage!) at Salman Pak, funding Palestinian wacko suicide bombers, etc.

Bin Laden and Saddam had a common enemy: The U.S. And as the Arab saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They had a common goal: they both wanted the U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden wanted that to "cleanse" the "holy land" and Saddam wanted us out (and out of the northern Iraqi "no fly" zones) so he go back to killing Kurds and Shia and could one day retake the "19th province" (Kuwait) and eventually take the oil fields of Saudi Arabia at some point in the future.

There WERE ties between Saddam an al Qaeda. That is undeniable objective fact. And there is evidence of a possible direct link to the planning of 9/11.

Among the millions of documents unearthed in Baghdad after the invasion are Iraqi intelligence papers that inclued the name of one of the 9/11 plot planners.

As I blogged here, quoting a Wall Street Journal story:

One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.

1. Bin Laden has been *very* consistent in calling for the overthrow of any non-Muslim government for the establishment of what he sees as a true Muslim state. His vision is that the entirety of the middle east, as a start, would be a borderless taliban-infested rat hole ran by a bunch of mullahs. Saddam isn't a Muslim, bin Laden doesn't play with those cats.

2. And this is the same Bill Clinton who "didn't inhale" and "never had sexual relations with that woman"? 'Nuff said. (Bill, I have to apologize at this point for using the sledgehammer to smash flies)

3. Saddam isn't a Muslim, and likely never was. He did act like one sometimes, in the same way that we see people in this country act like Christians when it's convenient for political purposes.

But Saddam liked alcohol and all sorts of other non-Muslim items. He also ran a very secular government; Iraq was one of the very few ME countries where Christians openly worshipped. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, it's illegal to even wear a cross.

Using the "enemy of an enemy" saying, we could have been friends with either.

And lastly, for the hundredth time, finding some guy who knew Saddam and knew bin Laden doesn't constitute a tie between the two. Anymore than McVeigh being in Iraq 12 years ago constitutes a tie.

The 9/11 commission found no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. It makes sense. Saddam was never interested in international terrorism. He was interested in being a regional menace, and conquering his neighbors. Read up on him and you'll start to see that the whole international scene wasn't his game.

You should probably be more concerned about Saudi Arabia on those counts.

You probably haven't read up on this, but a lot of the pre-war intelligence that we had came from Chalabi, who is allied with Iran as well as us. A lot of buzz has been generated by the idea that Iran used him to get us to oust Saddam, their enemy. A search on Google news for "chalabi" brings up this as the third hit:

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/06/17/build/opinion/40-guest-op.inc

There are plenty of others like it. But the non-existent WMD program and al Qaeda links may well have originated in Iran.

I have to ask again: Why is it *so* important to you to prove that Iraq had a WMD program and al Qaeda links? Why have you allowed the Left to define this argument?

By the way, totally off-topic, the WSJ has an editorial on the illegal alien situation and its relationship to the GOP. You might want to check it out.