Today:
Al Qaeda & Saddam [Jonah Goldberg]
I have always been agnostic about the Saddam - al Qaeda connection stuff. I never thought it was particularly central to the case for invasion. I still feel that way.
June 1, 2004:
The Connection [Jonah Goldberg ]
My friend, ocassional poker buddy and the instigator of several pranks against yours truly, has finally come out with his book: The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. I've had a few verbal briefings and I look forward to reading it. Hayes claims to have the goods on the real connections between al Qaeda and Saddam. If what I've heard so far pans out, it could shred the conventional wisdom.
June 18, 2004:
Re: Relationships [Jonah Goldberg]
From a reader:
Seems to me that Congressional Democrats are more willing to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt over his contacts with Al Qaeda than they are to give Cheney with his post-election contacts with Halliburton.
Also June 18, 2004:
Well, after 9/11 for people to be defending Iraq because they had "only" been having meetings, coffee klatches and the like with al Qaeda strikes me as pretty lame. No, alone in a vacuum having meetings with al Qaeda isn't cause for war. But we weren't operating in a vacuum. There were quite a few other variables involved, WMDs, deteroriating sanctions, Saddam's defiance of the UN, the need to be proactive after 9/11 etc. In other words, if we heard that France had been having get-togethers with al Qaeda, war wouldn't be an option. But Iraq — a country we were still more than technically at war with since 1991 — holds meeting with al Qaeda, that strikes me as serious, very serious.
Posted at 7:21 AM
June 30, 2004:
Allawi: Al Qaeda Connected to Saddam [Jonah Goldberg ]
Will this be the real reason the American press turns on the new Iraqi leader?
April 1, 2003:
Al-Qaeda [Jonah Goldberg]
More links to al-Qaeda found in a camp belonging to Ansar al-Islam militants. Here's a thought: wouldn't it be something if it turned out that Iraq doesn't have chemical weapons but does have direct ties to 9/11? It's extremely doubtful (I'm still convinced they have the weapons). But considering how everyone, including Tom Friedman, has poo-pooed the al-Quaeda/Iraq angle whenever the admistration has floated it, wouldn't it be grand if the one silver-bullet justification even the anti-war people have conceded for all these months turned out to be true?
For a guy that was agnostic, he sure did bring it up a lot.
UPDATE: Um, this isn't my blog. Sorry Atrios.