WSJ, Iraq & al Qaeda

[Laurie Mylroie]

The Wall Street Journal Best of the Web Today December 16, 2002 by James Taranto [Excerpt on Iraq] Catching Some Aziz How often have we heard members of the Leave Saddam Alone Coalition insist that there's no connection between the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda? Yet these very same people, apparently oblivious to the logical contradiction, insist that if America liberates Iraq, al Qaeda will step up its terrorism as sure as night follows day. In an interview with Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, Hussein henchman Tariq Aziz made the same two incompatible claims. He said "we don't say eye-to-eye" with al Qaeda. "We have a different ideology. We have a different policy. They don't belong to us and we don't belong to them." Yet just before he had answered affirmatively when Snow asked him if an attack on Saddam's regime would prompt more terrorism against America: "Certainly, certainly, certainly. People--the hatred against the United States  will reach its peak."