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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (46703)	5/24/2004 9:59:03 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 794009

Arguing that the Ba'athists and Al Qaeda were prepared to become close allies as soon as the Americans invaded would have undercut that contention. Nonsense. AQ would have sent people to try to undercut the US operation in Iraq even if Saddam had been their worst enemy. They are not fighting for Saddam or the Baathists. They are fighting for their own agenda. the argument was widely made that the secular Saddam would never have anything to do with the Islamists and vice-versa. Therefore Saddam could not possbily be funding Ansar al Islam or working with Al Quaeda, no way. Somebody might have made this argument, but it certainly wasn't me. Too many of these questions have been put through the reductio ad absurdem mill, and come out meaningless. Were there WMDs or were there not? That question is meaningless. The question that needed to be asked was whether the Iraqi CBW capability - the weapons in question hardly deserve to be called WMD - constituted a threat to the US. Similarly, the question of whether there were or were not "links" to AQ was meaningless. The question was whether the nature of those links made war necessary or desirable. Was Saddam "linked" to AQ? Yes. Was AQ so dependent on Saddam that the conquest of Iraq would be a significant blow to their ability to operate? No. A point I made many times before the war was that the advantages AQ would gain from an American occupation of Iraq - easily accessible targets, the potential for insurrection against a weak government, and the propaganda gains of American military operation against Arabs - would far outweigh the loss of any relationship they had with Saddam. I remember writing that if AQ could throw any Arab leader to the sharks, Saddam would probably be the one they'd choose. Would you say, with benefit of hindsight, that I was wrong?