• silverwhisper said on May 31, 2007....

  let osama and al qaeda do what? i think your question was cut-off. ?
  
  ed

• SeanRenaud said on May 31, 2007....

  Nope, back in the first Gulf War Osama approached the leaders of Syria saying that Muslim ands should be defended by Muslims.  Syria (and Kuwait) disagreed and the rest as they say is history.

• curmudgeon said on May 31, 2007....

  An interesting question. Would Al Qaeda have beaten back Saddam? Or would Saddam's forces - who had complete control of Iraq and Kuwait and weren't above using chemical weapons, mass murder and were the first ones to make Abu Grahib infamous - simply exterminated Al Qaeda and every last bin Laden supporter?
   
  In retrospect, should we simply have sided with the dictator we helped install in the first place and let him do our dirty work for us?

• pascodelta said on May 31, 2007....

  Hi...I don't think Saddam would have been naive enough to do the 'dirty work'.  The last thing he would have wanted was to be at loggerheads with Al Qaeda.  It would have been too easy for them to paint Saddam as an instrument of the 'Infidel', and they would not have been short of support in Iraq; whereas he was keen to see himself as a 'Great Arab'. 
  
  Saddam's brutality in putting down resistance, could be seen as an indication of how threatened he felt and a fight with Al Qaeda would have been just what he didn't need.  Saddam seemed willing to live with muslim extremist groups; wasn't Abu Nidal living there peacefully for years?

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