It's now obvious to most rational people that the Iraq War is a complete side-track from the (ahem!) "War on Terror" and is in fact only serving to motivate further Islamic extremism. But many, many US citizens still think Saddam was linked to terrorists, as the neo-cons have continually implied.

MSNBC reports that Wolfowitze even wanted to blame the 1993 World Trade Centre attack on Saddam. The report adds that Wolfowitz was fascinated with the theories of Laurie Mylroie, who claims that Saddam Hussein was "responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, along with virtually every other terrorist strike in the years since that have been commonly attributed to Al Qaeda."

I got a taste of the Saddam-terrrorist madness today when I posted some opinions at an Iraqi blog site, "Iraq The Model." An anonymous poster ridiculed me for saying there is no evidence linking Saddam with terrorism. He/she supplied three URL links to prove a connection. My investigations of these links are as follows:

1. http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jwit/jwit020823_1_n.shtml

This Abu Nidal story reports that he was killed in a Baghdad appartment in 2002, probably by Saddam, who was trying to eliminate any terrorist activity in his country. Saddam was particularly hard on Islamic fundamentalist (a la bin Laden) who he saw as a serious threat.

2. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/khodada.html

In this story, Sabah Khodada says "I assure you [9/11] was conducted by people who were trained by Saddam." This is typical of the misleading propaganda put out by anti-Saddam "experts" who now have control of the CPA but remain despised by ordinary Iraqis. Khodada claimed he worked at an Iraqi terrorist training camp, but the CIA itself says it was actually an ANIT-terrorist training camp! Khodada's lies are exposed here.

3. http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/15/sprj.irq.abbas.arrested/

This third story, is, in fact, the ONLY link connecting Saddam with terrorists. Yet Abu Abbas was a pathetic, aging thug who had renounced terrorism after hijacking the Achille Lauro a full 18 years previously. "In a 1996 interview, he told CNN the time for an armed struggle for a Palestinian state was over." Furthermore, the United States violated the Oslo peace accords when it seized him. An Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement was signed by the United States, Israel, Palestinian Authority, European Union, Russia, Jordan, Egypt and Norway on September 13, 1993. It specified that no member of the Palestine Liberation Organization will be arrested or brought to court for any action that happened prior to that day.

So that's it - one old man whose crime was 18 years old. That's Saddam's "deadly" and "imminent" link with terrorism.