[T]he question to be asked of Saddam and al Qaeda is not do we have clear evidence of their connections; but why wouldn’t they be connected? You can look at intellgience entirely inferentially, looking through the myriads of signals and signs and hints and guesses to find hard evidence of, say, a link between al Qaeda and Saddam. Or you can use your common sense, assume such a link and then go back to the intelligence data to see if such an assumption is backed up or disproven.
Err, well, because the secular Baathist party is exactly the kind of thing fanatical theocrats like bin Laden & co. want to get rid of, because they’ve called Hussein himself a “bad Muslim” in their recruiting videos, and because he’d have no guarantee that weapons he gave them wouldn’t ultimately hasten his own ouster. Now, I’m sure (well, I sure hope) that none of this is news to Sully.. but then it seems a little strange to ask “why wouldn’t they be connected?” as a semi-retorical question, and not even take a stab at a reply to the obvious answer.
