You are like an armchair quarterback who can't even get it right after the fact, I swear.
"Saddam is not Islamic"...lol. Saddam wasn't a "terrorist funder", 'cept that he was, and his country gave asylum to the guy who built the '92 WTC bombs....lol. Saddam "had no Al Qaida ties," save that we don't have a clue what was agreed to when Iraq in fact met with Al Qaeda/Taliban more than once....lol. Saddam had "no active WMD programs," save that they had materials enough to make massive amounts of WMD's, starting within a few weeks time....lol. Saddam had no "longrange missiles" save that he lied about building them longer-range than allowed by UN decree...lol.
What Saddam did have was meetings with Al Qaeda, a fuselage in an Iraqi terrorist training camp (by all testimony, UN inspectors and Iraqi defectors, and confirmed by independently taken satellite photos from the time alleged) where testimony exists that Saudis trained on the fuselage from separated but adjoining facilities to those for Saddam's fighting dudes, and an information minister who praised 911 and personally promised more to come.
What Osama had was, paraphrasing him, "word of whats to come, passed to me from others close to who planned it, praise allah."
What I think is that you'd be naive to doubt the likelihood that Saddam had pre-knowledge of 911 as surely as Osama did.
We've done the right thing as best we knew how. Not perfect? Not so good? We'll get it done if we follow through (I've my doubts we are doing so), and it's still the right thing.
Oh, and yes, contrary to your hypothesis, I'm sure Saddam was a bad deal for us, civil war concerns or not.
Dan B. |
