03-18-2004, 06:18 AM
"Now I feel you are trying to find a justification for Saddam's actions."
There's a difference between a justification and a reason which denies your conclusions. I'm not particularly interested in excusing him; on a personal level, he's clearly guilty of just about everything in anyone's book.
These articles are retreads of the same stuff. One, ten, a hundred articles, it's all still the same evidence: the one intercepted document of Zaraqwi working with Al Qaeda *after* the fall of Saddam, combined with his having recieved medical treatment in Baghdad, combined with various and sundry support for Ansar al-Islam's operations in Kurdistan, oppressing the Kurds.
Again, since harassing Kurds was on his "to do" list, and defending Israel was absolutely not, I see no reason why this paints a portrait of Saddam as any different from what we already knew for certain: that he was a pragmatic, ruthless, *secular* dictator. His support of terrorism was, as far as we can tell, entirely limited to these two areas, and did not include any support for Al Qaeda, or any other group except Ansar al-Islam. As for his tiffs with the Saudis, that's all neighbourhood business. The Saudis offer a thousand times the support to terrorism Iraq ever has. If Saddam was stonewalling them, it's because he hates the Saudis, not because he really loves terrorism.
Again, not a hill of beans. This is a justification for war, not "Six Degrees of Osama Bin Laden". That Saddam allowed so-and-so to work in Baghdad, when they had known ties to x-y-z, who are a splinter organization of thing-a-majig... it just doesn't cut it. Is there anything more solid than the Ansar al-Islam connection? I haven't seen it.
Jester
There's a difference between a justification and a reason which denies your conclusions. I'm not particularly interested in excusing him; on a personal level, he's clearly guilty of just about everything in anyone's book.
These articles are retreads of the same stuff. One, ten, a hundred articles, it's all still the same evidence: the one intercepted document of Zaraqwi working with Al Qaeda *after* the fall of Saddam, combined with his having recieved medical treatment in Baghdad, combined with various and sundry support for Ansar al-Islam's operations in Kurdistan, oppressing the Kurds.
Again, since harassing Kurds was on his "to do" list, and defending Israel was absolutely not, I see no reason why this paints a portrait of Saddam as any different from what we already knew for certain: that he was a pragmatic, ruthless, *secular* dictator. His support of terrorism was, as far as we can tell, entirely limited to these two areas, and did not include any support for Al Qaeda, or any other group except Ansar al-Islam. As for his tiffs with the Saudis, that's all neighbourhood business. The Saudis offer a thousand times the support to terrorism Iraq ever has. If Saddam was stonewalling them, it's because he hates the Saudis, not because he really loves terrorism.
Again, not a hill of beans. This is a justification for war, not "Six Degrees of Osama Bin Laden". That Saddam allowed so-and-so to work in Baghdad, when they had known ties to x-y-z, who are a splinter organization of thing-a-majig... it just doesn't cut it. Is there anything more solid than the Ansar al-Islam connection? I haven't seen it.
Jester