When the fat lady sings...

The Four-Day War
Who did Saddam Hussein turn to after
President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox?
Osama bin Laden.

By Thomas Joscelyn, The Weekly Standard

While the anti's continue to deny a relationship between OBL and Saddam, it might be prudent to remind such staunch believers that it ain't over until the fat lady sings.

There's been no doubt that OBL and Saddam were more than passing acquaintances. Nor that Saddam was happy to turn a blind eye and host the likes of Zarqawi - fellow terrorist in arms of OBL - operating chemical warfare training camps in northern Iraq from the late 1990s, and while he recouperated in a Bagdad hospital from injuries sustained fighting in Afghanistan along side OBL.

But the truth of their relationship has been concertedly muddied by MSM and the anti's half-truths, emphatically claiming instead Bush linked 9:11 to Saddam. The fact that the President never uttered those words has been overshadowed by overly "liberal" interpretations of his statements about the need to clean out the rats nests of terrorist havens in the Middle East.

But, as time goes by, and intel and movements of Saddam's henchmen grows more vast, and that heretofore dubious connection between the mastermind of 9:11 and Iraq's chief terrorist becomes more transparent.

Just days after Operation Desert Fox (Mata Musing: that was in 1998, for the memory challenged) concluded one of Saddam's most loyal and trusted intelligence operatives, Faruq Hijazi, was dispatched to Afghanistan. He met with senior leaders from the Taliban and then with bin Laden and his cohorts on December 21.

While we cannot be sure what transpired at this meeting, we can be sure that it was not some benign event. In fact, within days of the meeting bin Laden loudly declared his opposition to the U.S.-led missile strikes on Iraq and called on all Muslims to strike U.S. and British targets, including civilians, around the world. According to press accounts at the time, bin Laden explained, "The British and the American people loudly declared their support for their leaders' decision to attack Iraq." He added that the citizens' support for their governments made it "the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill" them.

With a free Iraq, the future promises more and better intel - not to mention a telling look at a past, formerly obscured by those studiously avoiding anything that may involve military force.

With the discovery of mustard gases, weapons able to carry a missle outside the range of acceptability, combined with what we now know about the goal of the OFF program... who knows.... the future may also reveal a stash of chemicals or weapons large enough to be classified as real WMD's in the anti's eyes.

Afterall the fat lady is merely warming up in the wings.