Why did Saddam have "God is Great" put on the Iraqi flag after the Gulf War, why was Saddam building the most expensive and largest mosques in the world in Iraq, people haven't been paying attention to Saddam's speeches int he last decade where he references the Koran and spoke highly of Jihadists as well as showing Saddam pray daily on Iraqi TV. Obviously Saddam was appeasing the Jihadists and it worked because it was proven TRUE that Bin Laden reached out to Iraq for training camps.
The current conventional wisdom is that Iraq and al-Qaida were totally unconnected. Indeed, it is believed by many that Saddam wanted nothing to do with bin Laden and his group. This book destroys those erroneous beliefs by examining the intelligence (and news accounts) available both before and after the Iraq war. This book is not based on just the Feith memo or the Prague meeting as some reviewers have suggested. It goes well beyond those things. Both are mentioned of course and the Prague meeting is given its own chapter. The details of the alleged meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and the Iraqi intelligence agent al-Ani in April 2001 are not all known but the evidence is compelling enough that it did occur for George Tenet to say privately that he believes it did take place.
The book also explores how the conventional wisdom before the Iraq war was that the connection between Iraq and al-Qaida not only existed but was strengthening. The mainstream press prior to 2003 reported extensively on the cooperation and ties between Iraq and al-Qaida. The Clinton administration, including Al Gore, also made the point several times that Iraq and al-Qaida were working together, most notably in Sudan and SE Asia. Ironically, it was Al Gore, as shown in his campaign speeches, who saw the connection between Saddam and the terrorist network that would later become known as al-Qaida, as early as 1992. All of this is discussed in the book in detail. I recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn more about the subject of al-Qaida and its extensive ties to Saddam's Iraq.
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