What if Saddam and al-Qaeda really did have a relationship?

This is the question Americans should be asking themselves before casting their vote this year. If it turns out that there was, in fact, coordination between the two prior to the overthrow of Saddam’s regime, would it make a difference in your view of the war? Should it?

It seems there is a bit of revisionist history going on in this election cycle, it being of course, the year of the Bush-bash. Perhaps it’s because for the first time in over half a century there exists no member of the current administration in the race who can defend its record, but nobody thus far has made a meaningful rebuttal of what has unfortunately come to be regarded as truth. Americans everywhere, many of whom have more interest at this point in who wins American Idol than who is nominated for the Presidency, have taken Senator Obama’s line that “there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and Dick Cheney decide to invade Iraq” as Gospel.

In this case, however, Mr. Obama is more of a false prophet than a messiah. Saddam Hussein did have a relationship with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, a fact which has been pointed out on several occasions.

Shortly after Mr. Obama made his remarks, Investor’s Business Daily attempted to correct the record in a February 28 editorial:

Abdul Rahman Yasin, a member of the al-Qaida cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb, found safe haven in Iraq, and documents recently found in Tikrit indicate that Saddam provided Yasin with both a home and a salary…

Back in 1999, ABC News reported that Saddam had offered bin Laden asylum, citing their "long relationship" and a December 1998 meeting in Afghanistan between Osama and Iraqi intelligence chief Faruq Hijazi…  

In 1998, the Clinton Justice Department alleged in an indictment against bin Laden that "al-Qaida reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al-Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaida would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq." 

On a previous occasion, President Bush tried to set the record straight regarding the founding of al-Qaeda in Iraq in a July 24, 2007 speech at Charleston Air Force Base:

Al-Qaida in Iraq was founded by a Jordanian terrorist, not an Iraqi. His name was Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Before 9/11, he ran a terrorist camp in Afghanistan. He was not yet a member of al-Qaida, but our intelligence community reports that he had longstanding relations with senior al-Qaida leaders, that he had met with Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Zawahiri.

In 2001, coalition forces destroyed Zarqawi's Afghan training camp, and he fled the country and he went to Iraq, where he set up operations with terrorist associates long before the arrival of coalition forces.

Nevertheless, the myth that Saddam and al-Qaeda had no contact continues to spread. On March 13 of this year, CNN declared, citing anonymous sources, that a Pentagon report “showed no connection” between Iraq and al-Qaeda:

The report released by the Joint Forces of Command five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq said it found no “smoking gun” after reviewing about 600,000 Iraqi documents captured in the invasion and looking at interviews of key Iraqi leadership held by the United States, Pentagon officials said.

The only problem for CNN being that this isn’t what the Pentagon report concluded. The abstract of the 94-page document reads as follows:

Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist-operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam's security organizations and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a "de facto" link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam's use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

Working together in pursuit of shared goals constitutes a relationship, does it not? And we all know what the goals of al-Qaeda are! Perhaps before voting for a candidate who will withdraw our troops based on the “fact” that this war was waged on false pretenses, one should take a moment and evaluate whether or not those pretenses were, in fact, false. Does it make a difference to whom gets your vote? Should it?