They weren't that stupid.
They trained their al Qaida errand boys on their airplane, helped finance them, and in my opinion gave them the anthrax love note to leave behind.
Iraqi Intelligence was involved in 1993 bombing of WTC and also involved in 9/11.
jveritas, tell me if I am wrong.
If Saddam was dealing with the 9/11 terrorist then he should have been taken out. My disagreement is in method. A war vs what could have and should have been a paid hit. Look we got into this mess in large part because one POTUS giving foreign heads of state protected status taking assassinations off the board. Not in line with what the Constitution spells out. Congress can order a price on an enemies head.
You can not deal with such threats through diplomacy. You can't go around strutting like a Banty Rooster in a hen house saying were coming to get you Saddam and expect any success of a covert operation.
I was not against taking out Saddam as such. However I think poor judgment has been used in what was never intended to be a actual war as in take the nation {Iraq} to it's knees. Bush planned a nation building project for Iraq BEFORE the first shots were even fired and the first two nights mission targets prove it.
Our money and military resources could have been better utilized securing our borders and our energies should have been focused on making certain we know who enters the nation and for how long rather than placing the burden on the backs of citizens so political correctness can be observed by not profiling actual probable risk.
Our military has been on the never ending deployment since 1991 and not Bush Sr, Clinton, nor GW Bush has done one thing to even raise troop strengths. Not one request to congress to raise End Troop Strengths beyond token increases.
We abandoned a lot of our military readiness posture leading up to 9/11. That came as a direct result of the policies of the two previous presidents and congress who gutted the military to ridiculous levels. When Iran 1979 happened two carriers were on station in the MED SEA 24/7 before it happened. Another WEST PAC was likely within a couple days steaming. Had the Ford/Rummy and Carter/Brown policies not put the military into a readiness crisis before this? We may have had a different outcome.
It seems strange to me as well people will curse the Carter foreign anfd military policies and rightfully so but give Ford/Rummy a pass on the mess they left Carter and it indeed was a mess. There's quite a few ex-service in the 1975-77 era walking around with General DC's from where they took 31 day walks and a got their ticket out with less than honorable discharge. Fords EO on prohitition of taking out leaders gave state sponsored terrorism a huge boost. That likely did far more long term damage to us than Carter's mis-handling of Iran.
Iraq was/is just one of many nations in the M.E. whom either attacked us or assisted others. There's Lebanon, Lybia, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, likely Syria, Cyprus, as well. Saudi Arabia also has factions within it that are the primary funding source for terrorist operations. I just mentioned the mid and lower MED Basin nations. I think 9/11 or not we were headed to Iraq no matter what. It's also obvious we had some rather bad intel in the early stages. Some of it bad intel and some just plain sloppy communications. The worse mistake made was involving the State Department. No good ever comes from their involvement in dealing with terrorist as they are too sympathetic to the terrorist cause. Just like they protect Israels enemies and try to prevent Israel from doing the world a favor.
Odd isn't it that Israel in just a few hours destroyed Saddams nuclear weapons program and was done with it. Maybe we need to try and micro manage events in the M.E. less and look at what worked instead. On the other hand we could take some lessons from Israel on military expedience of getting in and out before they even know what hit them.
You are exactly right Patricia except that we do not have credible evidence yet about the anthrax issue.