Is there a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda?

Hi Crash,One of the fascinating (to me, anyway) aspects of the entire WMD/UN inspections regime issue you raise is the appparent lack of any discussion anywhere as to what was in it for Hussein (I mean, allowing the inspectors back in). He'd quite clearly been playing a shell game during the entire course of inspections (just what the "pea" was he was shuffling around is another interesting question) until he booted UNSCOM out the first time in Dec 1998. He finally agreed in 2002 to accept a much more intrusive inspection regime under UN and IAEA control - after four years of utter silence when nobody knows what was going on inside Iraq - under threat of military action. I think it's interesting to speculate on why then? I find it difficult to accept that it was only through fear of war with the US - he'd been defying everybody and their brothers for a decade, after all. A couple of possibilities come to mind:1. He truly didn't have anything to hide either because the UNSCOM inspections had been successful (if so, why did he kick 'em out in the first place?) or because, during the four-year hiatus, he'd gotten rid of the whatever was left on his own initiative (possible, but why?).2. He'd eliminated the remaining evidence one way or the other because he was getting desperate to get the sanctions lifted without losing the ability to re-establish his R&D and production once he was given a clean bill of health - a case impossible if the US invaded.3. He was led to believe that the new inspection regime would be pro forma, or at least no worse than the previous one - a dangerous assumption, but possibly justified by his prior experience with UNSCOM.Basically, I believe Hussein was running a gambit, another throw of the dice. I think he was hoping to keep the capability to reinivgorate his chem/bio program as he wished after everybody got off his back. There's an interesting CIA report entitled "Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions 1 January Through 30 June 1999" which I think is available on line that you might find interesting. In it, it states:

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We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox [1998] to reconstitute its WMD programs, although given its past behavior, this type of activity must be regarded as likely. The United Nations assesses that Baghdad has the capability to reinitiate both its CW and BW programs within a few weeks to months, but without an inspection monitoring program, it is difficult to determine if Iraq has done so.

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Note that this is NOT the infamous, and justly criticized, CIA NIE that was used to justify the "Use of Force" Congressional resolution. This assessment was published in June 1999. In addition, there's evidence that Hussein - even under the new inspection regime - continued to play games. See, for example, the CRS report Iraq: U.N. Inspections for Weapons of Mass Destruction from Oct 2003.

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The U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducted over 750 inspections at 550 sites. These inspections seemed to benefit from strengthened authorities under the new U.N. resolution, new technologies, a better relationship between UNMOVIC and the IAEA, and pressure from the threat of military strikes. Nonetheless, most observers agree that Iraqi compliance was superficial and oriented to facilitating the process of inspections, rather than on providing cooperation in substantive matters. In addition, new practical, technical, and political challenges arose. There were allegations that not all actionable intelligence was shared with inspectors and that the threat of war increased pressure on inspectors to produce some definitive knowledge and helped politicize their investigations. Many alleged that Iraq might have hidden weapons activities in dual-use facilities over the last four years, thus complicating inspections. Ultimately, judging Iraq’s compliance may have relied less on thresholds of evidence, than on assumptions about the effectiveness and utility of inspections at that point in time. (emphasis added)

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In other words, even WITH the new, intrusive inspections, there was substantial doubt that Hussein was being, hmm, completely forthcoming. You might find this Carnegie Endowment for Peace report, WMD In Iraq: Evidence and Implications interesting. It's a bit long, and I personally don't agree with all of their conclusions (to put it mildly), but it provides an excellent overview of the state of play in intelligence and the WMD issue prior to and leading to the Iraq War.Oh, and to prevent Moose from suspending me for being off-topic, I never thought or agreed with the contention that there was any substantive linkage between Iraq and Al Qaeda. As our friend RAZD so eloquently and bluntly puts it - that was a lie from the git go.

Well, in point of fact, yeah. Most of us DID expect Hussein to "drop his pants". Especially if I'm right and it was in his interest to maintain a solid capability. After all, that was one of the key provisos in GHW Bush's cease-fire agreement back in '91. Sort of, "We won't finish kicking your tail off the planet if you open your facilities to UN inspectors." (As an aside, now THERE was a bluff - GHW had absolutely no intention of continuing on to Baghdad. He knew exactly what to expect if he did. I thought it one of the most hysterically funny moments of the debate when Kerry quoted GWB's father's book on that very subject. ) I think Loudmouth is on the money - Hussein really miscalculated our president's desire to go to war. Otherwise he wouldn't have kept playing the shell game under the new inspections (see the CRS report I linked above). I'm not so sure this is correct. Certainly, if you have nukes - say backed up by a million-man military like North Korea - you're pretty safe. Probably why every two-bit dictator on the planet's trying to acquire them. However, we quite readily attacked Iraq after they invaded Kuwait - in spite of quite certain and clear information that they had chem and bio weapons (after all, he'd just finished using them fairly extensively against both the Iranians and his own people). I think it's a bad idea to lump all CBR weapons into the too-easily-confused "WMD" category. Also, there is no question he maintained the capability, or the ability to renew the capability quite easily. Those dual-use facilities, for one thing (See the Carnegie report). He was even apparently trying to sneak in some new nuclear capability - something that everyone agrees was thoroughly dismantled after the first Gulf War. I hadn't talked about "positive outcomes", mostly 'cause I'm not sure in my own mind that the Iraqi invasion has generated much positive beyond definitively getting rid of Hussein himself. Which is not a bad thing, after all. However, you're right about one thing - countries like Iran see the difference between a chemical capability which can be snuffed out relatively easily and nukes, which can't be. Iran is playing a very dangerous card - my assessment is they're seizing the opportunity to join the nuke club while the US is stretched too thinly to stop them. If they succeed, then I'd have to say regardless of the final result in Iraq, it was generally a bad thing to go in there. We don't need any new regional superpowers. Those damn Canadians. Always sticking their noses into other people's business.

Welllll, when someone's (in this case, lots of someones) holding a gun to your head, likely saving face is immaterial. Besides, he'd already been under an inspections regime for 6+ years, remember? My guess is he figured this would be the last one, and no one the wiser. I think he was an idiot who badly miscalculated. If you've been reading my posts, I think you realize that I believe he WAS weaponless in the end. I disagree that he needed to save face. No one internally was going to say anything, that's for sure. And who do you think he cared about outside of the country? Besides, he wasn't "capitulating to the Great Satan", he was allowing a (hitherto) toothless UN inspection team into the country under duress. Not much change if any for what he was under between 92-98, by his lights. Heck, the first go around made him more friends than anything we did to him during the first Gulf War. He could literally laugh at the UNSCOM folks. I'm sure he intended to do the same in the last round. He simply misjudged ol' GWB. The situations are not even close to analogous. The countries and cultures aren't even remotely similar. What WE would do in that situation has zero relevance for what the options and possibilities were for Hussein.

As to the first question, don't be ridiculous. I've never said that or implied it. We're talking about Hussein, yes? We're talking about a megalomaniac who was convinced of his own invulnerability and in many ways completely divorced from reality. No one who wanted to keep his head attached to his shoulders was going to gainsay him. I am convinced he believed, and may have been led to believe by external powers (although admittedly this is a suspicion, not a fact I can evidence), that a superficial compliance with a new set of inspectors would enable him to get the sanctions on his country lifted - a critical policy goal. In addition, he made major propaganda points by playing the martyr to the evil oppression of the Great Satan - a term he borrowed from the Iranians. He quite simply miscalculated Bush's desire to go fight a war somewhere. Since I've spent a great deal of time living and working in the Middle East, I don't need to turn on my TV to understand how proud and yes touchy Arabs are about nationalism, etc. However, don't try to extrapolate from Arab nationalism to Hussein's political moves. He had quite a definite objective - getting the sanctions lifted - and saw this as an opportunity to try to have his cake and eat it at the same time. He failed on his gambit, primarily because IMO he never imagined Bush would actually go to war. Wrong, again. Just like Kuwait... Actually, you asked a very complex question, as I've tried to point out. It's unclear to me, at least, which of us "knows so little about the people in the Middle East", and especially about Hussein, that we can't predict actions and motivations.

Umm, I've been talking about Hussein specifically since my first post on this thread (post #35). Remember? I asked the question - and speculated on several possible answers - about what was in it (meaning allowing the second round of inspectors back in) for him personally? You seem to be fixated on thinking that Hussein's primary motivation is some kind of nationalism. Or that he would have cared one way or the other about what his people thought. He was actually able to use the situation to gain support externally by playing the Arab martyr card. If anything, the inspections merely helped that endeavor. He managed to go from being a pariah prior to the first Gulf War to being a symbol of US imperialism in the Middle East. And we played along. I sometimes think that if we hadn't had a president as nearly megalomaniacal as Hussein he might have succeeded in getting off scott-free. I would argue that megalomaniacs AREN'T particularly concerned with saving face. They are so assured of their own invincibility that nothing can touch them - let alone public opinion. Besides, he was winning the propaganda war right up until the tanks crossed the Iraqi border. Take another look at the run-up to the war and the political maneuvers both in the Middle East and even in the West. I am convinced he truly believed, even with tanks on the outskirts of Baghdad, that he was winning the ground war, as well.

That's interesting. There's an AP article by Laura Meckler called Questioning Reveals Saddam Motivated by Prestige, Iran on my AOL newswire this morning that seems to support the contention that Hussein was more interested in his own "legacy" than by anything else.

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''He accrued power and prestige far beyond his inherent weight by positioning himself as the only leader to stand up to the last superpower,'' the report said.

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At a Senate hearing, [former weapons inspector Charles] Duelfer was asked why - if Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 invasion - he did not simply comply with U.S. and U.N. demands in an attempt to avert the war. Duelfer said Saddam's instincts were always to negotiate - to seek something in return before giving something up.

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''He had not realized the nature of the ground shift in the international community,'' after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Duelfer said.

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Until the end, Saddam saw himself as a great leader of a great nation, the report says. With an eye to history, he had bricks made for use in the historic city of Babylon molded with the phrase, ''Made in the era of Saddam Hussein,'' mimicking the ancient bricks there.

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''This narcissism characterizes his actions,'' the report says. ''And while it is not always visible, it is always there.''

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This seems to support my contention that he truly miscalculated because he was divorced from reality. It also speaks to Crash's idea that he was concerned about how he was viewed - although I think that "saving face" is probably not the correct characterization.Oh, well, enough on this subject already.