While liberals love to paint those of us who believe, and have proven, that there was indeed a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam, as believing that Saddam was behind 9/11 this point of view is intellectually dishonest. Imagine that, a liberal who is intellectually dishonest. Shocker huh?
I know of no one who states unequivocally that Saddam was behind 9/11 but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Iraq and al-Qaeda were tied in more ways then one. Tenet’s book outlines just a few of those. While the MSM outfits seem to only focus on a few passages where he suggests the Bush administration rushed to war they completely ignore other passages which Thomas Joscelyn highlights: (h/t Cliff May)
There was more than enough evidence to give us real concern about Iraq and al-Qa’ida; there was plenty of smoke, maybe even some fire: Ansar al-Islam [note: Tenet refers to Ansar al-Islam by its initials "AI" in several places]; Zarqawi; Kurmal; the arrests in Europe; the murder of American USAID officer Lawrence Foley, in Amman, at the hands of Zarqawi’s associates; and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad operatives in Baghdad.
Or:
The intelligence told us that senior al-Qa’ida leaders and the Iraqis had discussed safe haven in Iraq. Most of the public discussion thus far has focused on Zarqawi’s arrival in Baghdad under an assumed name in May of 2002, allegedly to receive medical treatment. Zarqawi, whom we termed a "senior associate and collaborator" of al-Qa’ida at the time, supervised camps in northern Iraq run by Ansar al-Islam (AI).
We believed that up to two hundred al-Qa’ida fighters began to relocate there in camps after the Afghan campaign began in the fall of 2001. The camps enhanced Zarqawi’s reach beyond the Middle East. One of the camps run by AI, known as Kurmal, engaged in production and training in the use of low-level poisons such as cyanide. We had intelligence telling us that Zarqawi’s men had tested these poisons on animals and, in at least one case, on one of their own associates. They laughed about how well it worked. Our efforts to track activities emanating from Kurmal resulted in the arrest of nearly one hundred Zarqawi operatives in Western Europe planning to use poisons in operations.
Even more:
What was even more worrisome was that by the spring and summer of 2002, more than a dozen al-Qa’ida-affiliated extremists converged on Baghdad, with apparently no harassment on the part of the Iraqi government. They had found a comfortable and secure environment in which they moved people and supplies to support Zarqawi’s operations in northeastern Iraq.
Other high-level al Qaeda terrorists set up shop in Baghdad as well. From Saddam’s neo-Stalinist capital they planned attacks around the globe …
Want more? Check out the category feature of this blog on the sidebar and click the Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection category. I have more then two years of post on this subject alone. There is so much evidence of this relationship it’s hard to believe that people are so hard-headed to ignore it all. But ignore it they do, all for political reasons. They hate Bush, they hate Cheney, they hate war, they hate the universe….whatever they hate, their hatred blinds them to all the facts staring them in the face.
Facts such as the whole world’s intelligence agencies forming the opinion that Saddam had WMD’s. Facts such as Saddam’s connection to al-Qaeda. Facts such as Saddam’s attempt to get Uranium from Niger in 1999. Facts such as Saddam using WMD’s on his own people, ignoring the cease fire that stopped hostilities in Desert Storm, his attempts to shoot down our fighter jets, his attempt to assassinate our President…..all these facts put together should lead a person with some intelligence, with some common sense, to agree that allowing Saddam to remain in power after 9/11 would have been criminal.
Thankfully we had one person who had that intelligence and common sense in the Presidency. Not to mention the courage to do the right thing, even when he knew there would be a backlash.
And that man was President George W. Bush.
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