Who thinks...

[somerfrost]

Originally Posted by pmayjr

A little side note that I'd like to point out here- It's kinda related and not really. When watching a National Geographic special about 9/11, and the CNN Special "In the Footsteps of Bin Laden" reinforced this- Saddam and Bin Laden aren't and never were working with each other. If Al Queda is in Iraq, it came after the U.S. invaded. Why?

When Saddam invaded Kuwait in '90 or '91, and there was a threat that Saudi Arabia would be next, Bin Laden went to the Saudi Govt/kingdom/head-honchos to offer him and his Mujahadin to fight off Saddam. They had successfully driven the Soviets out of Afghanastan, and now Bin Laden wanted to defend his homeland. The Saudis rejected his offer, and instead enlisted the U.S. to drive out the Iraqis, and that's what actually started Bin Laden's hatred for the U.S. He was pissed that his own country rejected his offer to defend it... and since we were the "defenders", we ended up being hated by him for that reason.

I bring this up, because there's so many people I hear that say Saddam and Al Queda or Saddam and Bin Laden are working together bla bla bla bla. They never worked together and the 2 I think are in different sects of iIslam as well. Isn't Bin Laden Sunni and Saddam Shiite? Wasn't that one more reason why Saddam had to rule with such an Iron fist? He ruled with the religious MINORITY, eventhough the country's majority was Sunni.

Pretty much true...Saddam has links to terrorism, he did after all provide families of suicide bombers financial "rewards"...but Saddam was/is a pragmatist, he pretended to be a loyal follower of Islam when it suited him but his moral code somewhat destroyed that obvious charade. Al Queda was in Iraq before Saddam fell, but you are correct that he held them in check and would give more verbal support than anything...he played the "loyal follower" game!