The Iraq Connection

The central argument against the Iraq invasion has been for some time that Iraq is a diversion in
the War on Terror. The main front was in Afghanistan and in breaking up terror cells around the world, but not in
Iraq.

Of course, nobody has said that the 9/11 attacks were planned in Saddam’s office in Baghdad, but the
evidence is pretty clear that Saddamite Iraq had allied itself with Al Qaeda and saw itself as part of
a coalition of forces opposing the power of the United States.
Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn ventilate some of the intelligence that the MSM
would rather not talk about that makes it pretty clear that there were relationships between Iraq and
Al Qaeda.

We have been told by Jordan’s King Abdullah that his government
knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former
Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents
from Zarqawi’s group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in
Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell. We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was
with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime
minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin
Laden’s top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999.

It is stretching credibility to imagine that al Zarqawi was operating in Iraq without the approval
of Saddam. More interesting is the question whether the Baathist opposition is still allied with
al Zarqawi or whether they are now ready to do a deal that gets them out of the uncomfortable
business of civil war and back into the political scene
in post-Saddam Baghdad.