Quote:
Originally Posted by Toy Soldier
The suggestion that there were zero Al Qaeda agents in Iraq before the beginning of the war is simply impossible, though? I'm not saying they were a significant presence or that there were any more than there currently are in any western nation, but they were certainly there, and ready to radicalize a pushed population.
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Depends how far you want to water it down. There may well have been people connected to Al Qaeda in Iraq, but they were not there for operations. Sadam despised them, so he would have just wiped them out.
Sadam didn't have any lofty goals for Islam beyond maintaining his own power, which put him at odds with the goals of the Wahhabi jihad movement.
It's really hard to infiltrate countries with dictatorships because they work through fear, and feeding information to the regime to protect your own neck is the way it works.
But to repeat - Al Qaeda were not operating in Iraq at that time, and nor would they had Sadam remained in power.