In a recent post, I talked about the story about how Saddam even while on the run and in hiding still advised his followers to have nothing to do with al-Qaeda-type terrorists. Joe Conason followed up on that story with a speculation that the leak itself was payback from the CIA for various grievances against Pentagon hardliners and other Bush officials, not least of them the outing of undercover agent Valerie Plame.
I got an e-mail in responding sarcastically to my comment, saying that he was sure that the news would be a big comfort to Saddam's victims. He was trying to avoid the point, of course, which was that the Administration's case for war that they were making intesensely a year ago was amazingly dishonest.
But as I thought about it, it occurred to me that in fact it is good news for Saddam's victims and all those Iraqis who are genuinely interested in moving their country in a democratic direction that the Baathists and the Islamic extremists are not allied in the insurgency.
It's more of a mixed blessing for the American and British troops in the Iraqi shooting gallery. On the one hand, it means that Baathists and al-Qaeda extremists aren't teaming up to carry out attacks on the occupation forces. So in the short term that sounds like good news. But in the longer run, it means that the resistance is not driven by foreign terrorists but by domestic insurgents. And that makes the prospects for success more difficult to achieve.
Juan Cole comments with some bitterness on the news:
Well, folks, if Saddam wouldn't cooperate with the al-Qaeda and other radical Islamists when he was reduced to hiding in a spider hole, he sure as hell wasn't going to give them WMD when he was in his palace in Baghdad!
The thing that makes me weep is that some GIs actually went to war against Iraq with pictures of the Twin Towers in their backpacks, thinking they were avenging September 11. If they wanted to avenge September 11 they should have gone to Afghanistan.
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