re: #122 Equable

It might seem very ridiculous now, but at the time there was enough fear, dread, sadness and most of all, paranoia to last a life time. I mean, our intelligence indicated that Hussein had recently attempted to launch an assassination attempt on Bush Sr. in 1993. Qaddafi (hell, pick one of the 80-quadrillion different spellings) was responsible for the Lockerbie tragedy.

Down-ding me if you want, but I can understand why that was many people’s first impression. Bin Laden immediately came to my mind, but had I not kept abreast of current events I too might have considered the possibility. It isn’t so ridiculous that national leaders, especially from that region would pull a boner head move like that. And considering that people had very little faith in our intelligence community at the time (after 9/11) and the sheer audacity/barbaric nature of the attack, again - I can see why people would blame him in the first place even after it was reported that Bin Laden could be responsible.

I’d hate to believe that our leaders used our righteous anger as a springboard to start a fight in Iraq, but after learning what Hussein was up to before and after 9/11 I still believe that we did the right thing in Iraq.

We definitely did the right thing in Iraq. Hussein was not a nice guy. (I wish we’d planned it a little better - we did a great job with the war, but not such a great job at first with the rebuilding)

However, a link between Hussein and AQ would not have been of interest to Hussein. For all his faults, Iraq was a fairly secular state and Hussein was not the same branch of Islam as AQ on OBL. He had no more use for Talibani-style mountain religion than we do.