Comment Re:Repaid already? (Score 1) 636
There are laws on the books forbidding murder in every country - yes. However, that doesn't mean they are followed (remember Iran has the fatwa against Salman Rushdie - and don't even get me started on China honoring copyright laws on the books). Furthermore, the people we are talking about are NOT concerned with national laws. They are adherents to a radical, and distorted, view of Islam which expressly sanctions murder of innocents (cf. Section V. Killing Women, Children, and the Elderly is Permitted for one example.
Saddam did not "back" Radical Islamic terrorism any more than Islamic terrorism backed him - they were fellow travelers who found each other useful upon occasion. (see Weekly Standard article or, if you feel the source is too impugned despite the footnooting, how about the UK Guardian. Even the 911 report stated "Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda-save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against "Crusaders" during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army." Chapter 2
So, while there is no evidence that that 9/11 was directly plotted by Saddam, there is a -lot- of evidence of other cooperation on a variety of traning and supply matters. Add into that Saddam's demonstrated willingness to use WMD on his own population and against Iran in a war he started, then the case for preemption becomes stronger. Not that the case is proven, but statements like "The current administration got all their facts about Iraq plain wrong" ignores the evidence out there (much of which is contradictory, admittedly) as well as the consensus pre-war intelligence estimates of the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, etc. etc.
Saddam did not "back" Radical Islamic terrorism any more than Islamic terrorism backed him - they were fellow travelers who found each other useful upon occasion. (see Weekly Standard article or, if you feel the source is too impugned despite the footnooting, how about the UK Guardian. Even the 911 report stated "Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda-save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against "Crusaders" during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army." Chapter 2
So, while there is no evidence that that 9/11 was directly plotted by Saddam, there is a -lot- of evidence of other cooperation on a variety of traning and supply matters. Add into that Saddam's demonstrated willingness to use WMD on his own population and against Iran in a war he started, then the case for preemption becomes stronger. Not that the case is proven, but statements like "The current administration got all their facts about Iraq plain wrong" ignores the evidence out there (much of which is contradictory, admittedly) as well as the consensus pre-war intelligence estimates of the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, etc. etc.
