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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: spiral3 who wrote (105215)	7/14/2003 2:26:16 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

They are both enemies of the same enemy, ergo...

To: spiral3 who wrote (105215)	7/14/2003 10:12:41 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

Saddam was an infidel in the eyes of Osama. They could agree on hating the US, and Israel, but they have fundamentally different (and conflicting) values. globalangst.blogspot.com A Taliban commander said at the time that despite Saddam's battle with the United States, bin Laden would not relocate to Iraq because "he has differences with Saddam. He is not a good Muslim. Saddam does not care about Islam like Osama." The commander refused to be identified for fear of reprisal. Indeed, Saddam's Baath party is just the sort of secular Arab government that the ultra-religious al-Qaida organization would be likely to oppose. Bin Laden's beliefs sprung from the deeply conservative Wahhabi movement, which rejects smoking, drinking and socializing between men and women. Baath socialism, by contrast, emerged in the 1950s as a mix of leftist economics, Arab nationalism and secular social policy, though Saddam has drawn on religion more since his defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. But then there is this, below- which suggests that if they hate the US enough- post 9-11- that they might work together- although Saddam is smart enough to know that militant Muslims in his country would not support him- so it's an iffy proposition for Saddam. Analysts caution that history means nothing in the shifting realities of the post-Sept. 11 world. "On the face of it, their views of the role of religion in running an Arab society make them strange bedfellows, but that they could become united due to their sheer loathing of the United States — it would be foolish to exclude such a possibility," said Warren Bass, a Middle East expert at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations