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” this is a real treasure-trove of information about the Saddam/Bin Ladin connections”

? Where do you find even a single bit of hard evidence linking Saddam to bin Laden? I waded through that 2005 Iraq Survey Group report that always gets waved about but which no one ever reads. There is nothing in that report linking Saddam to bin Laden or al Qaeda.

Saddam’s terrorism consisted of killing Iraqis at home and abroad whom he saw as a threat to his regime. Saddam was a secularist who regarded Islamic radicals with suspicion. Saddam had Christians in prominent positions in his own government which ought to be your first clue that Islam was of little interest to him.

If you had read Saddam Hussein’s speeches in the years since 1998 posted on what was then the regime website Uruk.net you would have a hard time claiming he wasn’t interested in radical islam. They were loaded with Qurannic references and calls for jihad.
He was definitely trying to appeal to islamists and rally them to Iraq’s cause. He even made a point of having a Quran written in what he claimed piously, was his own blood.
He also began building a massive mosque- its minarets designed to look like scud missiles.
In the latter years of his regime he instituted sharia law as well, and at this time the prostitutes of Baghdad found themselves in deep trouble. Not yet Taliban style but definitely headed that way. Like any politician he could read the tea leaves and figure out which way the wind blows and how to use it. So his state run newspapers - headed by one of his sons began praising al Qaeda and bin Laden.
Yes, he had nominal Christians among his officials, at least one Tarik Aziz, the guy he used to bribe western officials and who has some VERY interesting nonchristian connections of his own.
Yes, recall how he was also a great enemy of Iran, fought a war with them even over control of a waterway. YEt to which country did Saddam send his air force when we struck in the Gulf War? And was it not France and Iraq which had harbored the Ayatollah Khomeini before the overthrow of the Shah?
Saddam was a very flexible boy.
At the time of our invastion he was hosting the head of ANO, Abu Nidal, known for his spate of hijackings. He’d hosted him since Qadaffi kicked him out of Libya years before. But Abu Nidal couldn’t talk to us after 9/11 since the Iraqis said he committed suicide ... by shooting himself in the head five times. And to which country fled the head of the terrorist ring which bombed the World Trade Center in 1993? Which country provided that terrorist with a home and a pension? The 1993 WTC bombing terrorist cellsw spiritual leader sits in our prison, while al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri’s brother in Egypt calls for us to release him to the muslim brotherhood.
And to what country fled an Iraqi caught in Jordan after he had he met with two of the future 9/11 hijackers in Malaysia- a meeting where the bombing of the USS Cole was planned? When detained by Jordan the leftists of the world including Human Rights Watch all howled at Jordan for keeping the man until Jordan finally released him. He fled to Iraq. But before he fled in his possession was found the phone numbers of the perps of several terrorist plots and to the Jersey cell.