Bin Laden Hooked for $addam

This link provides a tremendous amount of detailed information telling a tangled web of terrorism and payback. Essentially, Saddam hated us but couldn't do anything about it without us lobbing a few cruise missiles on his WMD stashes, so he started paying big money, provided by the UN Food for Oil Program, to al-Qaeda so that bin Laden could do his dirty work for him. The whole thing must be read, here's a teaser:

After he received Saddam's payout, Zawahiri immediately folded up his tent and irrevocably merged his organization with bin Laden's. "The merger was de facto complete by February 1998," the 9/11 Report states. Zawahiri most likely used it to fund the merger costs: to regularize the training and indoctrination of jihad recruits and to jump-start the new project initiatives of al-Qaeda. It is impossible to believe that Saddam, state gangster extraordinaire, would simply sign over a check to a known terrorist and be unaware of what his money was going for. In effect, this payment helped fund the new, merged al-Qaeda - and its new plots.

What was the big plot brewing in 1998? September 11, 2001. Bin Laden and Zawahiri knew they needed to kick their newly funded terrorist network off with a big public flourish. And so, less than three weeks after his new deputy's visit to Baghdad, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued his infamous public fatwa. The particular language had been in negotiation for some time, as part of the merger deal. 

I certainly don't need to be talked into the justification of the Iraqi war. My pastor in Texas once said that God will rage war for 2 reasons: 1) to bring justice (check that) and 2) to protect Israel (check that). However, many americans simply do not understand the full truth. This is such a huge story, and our dinosaur media continues to ignore the truth. So sad, their own agenda is just more important to them.

(Hat tip to my fellow RI conservative friend: Sean O.)