I was one of the few that argued before the war that it made no sense for Iraq to be allied with AQ. It seemed like 98% of Americans (including the entire Bush Administration) had no clue about Sadaam, Iraq, and the M.E., so it fell on deaf ears.
Sadaam was an absolute control-freak. He was the "decider", without question, and brooked no opposition. He ran a secular government which allowed him to operate without interference from any religious law, doctrine, or code. Since AQ called for Islamic theocracies, they represented the polar opposite of what Sadaam based his power on. AQ would have been a loose cannon in Iraq, possibly spreading and re-enforcing ideas that Sadaam had long sought to eradicate.
You really didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out, just invest enough time to have even a meager understanding of how things really were.
What should have been obvious to the most casual observer, was lost in a sea of ignorance.
It is still something of a sore point with me today that the few of us that argued that there was no logic to an AQ/Sadaam connection could get virtually no one to actually stop and think it through. It seemed that most simply accepted the BS that Bush/Cheney put out and dismissed any idea of of it requiring any actual thought.
Oh well, my rant for the day.
