...Democrats who oppose the war in Iraq have discounted any link between Islamist fanatic bin Laden and secular Ba’athist socialist Hussein. As a political matter, if Saddam has been in cahoots with Osama (the psychopathic mastermind whose terrorists killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11-01) then the legitimacy of President George W. Bush’s attack on Iraq would be as hard to deny or defy as was his overthrow of the Taliban bin Laden pirate base of Afghanistan.

But President Bush in recent months has also downplayed any linkage between Hussein and al Qaeda, preferring instead to justify the overthrow of Saddam on grounds that the dictator possessed or was about to acquire weapons of mass destruction that would make him an intolerable threat to the peace of the region and world...