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From the Wall Street Journal

March 24, 2006
By JAMES TARANTO


Who's Lying Now?
Those Saddam documents are coming out, and there are strong
suggestions--not surprisingly to some of us--that the notion that he
had nothing to do with al Qaeda is a myth. ABC News reports:

A newly released prewar Iraqi document indicates that an official
representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden
in Sudan on February 19, 1995, after receiving approval from Saddam
Hussein. Bin Laden asked that Iraq broadcast the lectures of Suleiman
al Ouda, a radical Saudi preacher, and suggested "carrying out joint
operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. According to the
document, Saddam's presidency was informed of the details of the
meeting on March 4, 1995, and Saddam agreed to dedicate a program for
them on the radio. The document states that further "development of
the relationship and cooperation between the two parties to be left
according to what's open [in the future] based on dialogue and
agreement on other ways of cooperation." The Sudanese were informed
about the agreement to dedicate the program on the radio.

The report then states that "Saudi opposition figure" bin Laden had to
leave Sudan in July 1996 after it was accused of harboring terrorists.
It says information indicated he was in Afghanistan. "The relationship
with him is still through the Sudanese. We're currently working on
activating this relationship through a new channel in light of his
current location," it states.

As ABC notes, this does not prove "that the two parties did in fact
enter into an operational relationship." But it does blow out of the
water the silly notion that secular Saddam and fundamentalist bin
Laden could not possibly find common ground.

This actually never made sense; history is replete with examples of
ideologically opposed nations uniting against a common enemy. The
Soviet Union did it with both Nazi Germany and the U.S. during World
War II. The current Syrian regime is a secular Baathist thugocracy
just like the old Iraqi one, but the Syrian dictators Assad & Son were
bitter rivals of their Iraqi counterpart and strong allies of the mad
mullahs who run Iran. "Saddam and al Qaeda could never have anything
to do with each other" stands exposed as a Big Lie of the left and the
isolationist right.

Daily Kos diarist "SusanG" offers an interesting window into the
mentality of the anti-anti-Saddam left:

I also find it disingenuous that the right claims sole ownership of
the "Saddam is a bad, bad man" banner. Please. Compared to the liberal
left, they are decades late to that particular party. Progressives
were screaming into the void about Hussein's human rights violations,
his gassing of the Kurds, his terrorizing of political opponents long,
long, long before it conveniently bubbled up into the consciousness of
the neocon right. While Donald Rumsfeld was famously shaking hands
with and arming Hussein, we were saying: Bad idea. Bad man. This is
gonna come back and bite us in the ass.

It appears that the definition of a "progressive" is someone who
believes the answer to any problem is "screaming into the
void"--either against the problem or against anyone who does anything
to solve the problem. How exactly this is supposed to lead to progress
is a topic for another day.

--

Scott in Florida