Sequels Always Suck

Over at The Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes rips the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report:

According to a report released September 8th by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Saddam Hussein "was resistant to cooperating with al Qaeda or any other Islamist groups." It's an odd claim. Saddam Hussein's regime has a long and well-documented history of cooperating with Islamists, including al Qaeda and its affiliates.

As early as 1982, the Iraqi regime was openly supporting, training, and funding the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization opposed to the secular regime of Hafez Assad. For years, Saddam Hussein cultivated warm relations with Hassan al-Turabi, the Islamist who was the de facto leader of the Sudanese terrorist state, and a man Bill Clinton described as "a buddy of [Osama] bin Laden's."

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Later in the article, Hayes comments on the report's claim that Hussein was "resistant" to cooperation with the Islamists. The committee's source? "postwar detainee debriefs - including debriefs of Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz."

Read the article. Hayes does a great job of picking apart this rag of a report.