How much control do you really think Sadam really has over radical Islam? I believe this Islamic jihad is a completely separate fight from Iraq's. As you stated, he probably does see al qaeda as a useful tool and probably did supply them with the anthrax but I see this fight as Islam versus western civilization. They may not have their hands on WMD yet but they do have cells throught the US and they've had nine months to plan. As we have seen, they do not need WMD to carry out an attack.
Thing is, I don't think Radical Islam is that sophisticated, sans Saddam. It's a bunch of people like that dopey shoe bomber. Not that they can't do a significant amount of damage, even with people like that -- the shoe bomber could have taken down that plane. But the really big stuff is probably beyond them. Read up on the original WTC attack. A bunch of stumblebums were recruited by someone much more sophisticated -- and definitely not a radical Islamist -- who went by the name of Ramzi Yousef. I doubt bin Laden, if he is still alive, could organize the proverbial piss-up in a brewery. He has money, he makes good videos, he is willing to live in a cave and fulfill the Arabs' fantasies of what a messiah looks like, but I see no evidence that he is also some sort of military mastermind. Hussein, in contrast, is very sophisticated, he's a survivor, he loves technology, loves way-out plots and super-weapons, and he's actually organized. His pretensions to being the new Saladin aren't actually that unrealistic, given the shambolic state of the Arab world.