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Sept 16, 2003 Do we honesty believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks? Apparently some 70% of us are, according to recent poll conducted by the Washington Post which included Democrats, Republicans and Independents, so this is not a partisan issue. That could very well be now, but that is not the way it was presented when we went to war with Iraq last spring. It was because Saddam Hussein was an “evil dictator” who possessed “weapons of mass destruction” that were either a direct threat to the free world it that might be shared at some point with outside terrorists. The inability to find those weapons has weakened that argument and the administration is now forced to shift the justification of why we went to war with Iraq in the first place. Both Saddam and bin Laden are fanatics but with a different agenda in politics as well as religion. Saddam’s primary interest was retaining and controlling his own power base in Iraq. If he was a terrorist, it was against his own people who he felt were not loyal to him. He was the arrogant, smiling, sadistic “Big Brother” who delighted in seeing his image portrayed in statures and posters all over his domain – the Arabic equivalent of Chairman Mao. The goal of bin Laden is to spread his Muslim fundamentalist philosophy throughout the world through “jihad” – a holy war. And, he is deadly serious about his mission which makes him a true, religious fanatic and much more sinister to the threat of world peace than his Iraqi counterpart ever was. I think the one thing that separates the two men in their ideologies is their attitude about women. Bin Laden wants to, literally, keep them barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen while Saddam wanted to use them as a symbol of his “enlightened dictatorship” – educate them, elevate them, enjoy them and make them very visible in his Baath Party regime. In the world of politics, perception is often more important than reality. For many Americans the perception is that the war in Iraq was directly linked to the September 11th and the terrorists who carried out the attacks. This is unfortunate because it may be diverting our attention away from Osama bin Laden and real terrorism threats. ------------ About the author: Bobbie Hart O’Neill is a retired print media journalist, CSU-Sacramento, ’74, with 40 years experience in the field. She has worked as a reporter, feature writer, columnist, public relations writer, magazine/newsletter editor and publisher. She is currently a freelance writer residing in Yuma, Arizona and has published a children’s book, written three screenplays and a novel. In addition, she is interested in civic affairs, politics, current events, ethnology and animals. Visit her blog or email Bobbie: bobbieo@digitaldune.net Comment on this column in the forum. Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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