Diane Sawyer, during an interview with President Bush on 18 December 2003 questioned the President’s justification for the preemptive invasion of Iraq. When the President couldn’t satisfactorily defend his actions because there were no connections to al Qaeda and because WMDs had not been found, the President simply closed out the topic by stating, “Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.”

But, let’s remove the emotional rhetoric and examine the question from an objective perspective. Before and after 9/11, we had Saddam in a box. No-fly zones covered two thirds of his country. Every time Saddam tried to squirm or act defiantly, the Clinton Administration, with a volley of cruise missiles, swatted him like a fly. His Army, Air Force, Air Defense and Communications Systems were shells of their previous selves and he had no Navy. Saddam was never a threat to the United States or to any of his neighbors. Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all opposed our aggression against Iraq.

Ties between Saddam and al Qaeda have never been proven, and the idea of a cooperative relationship stretches the limits of rational thinking. Osama bin Laden despised Saddam and the secularism that existed in Iraq. Saddam had a great fear of Islamic fundamentalism and the formation of an Islamic state that occurred in Iran. He went to great lengths and used brutal means to ensure that the Shiite majority in his country was suppressed and that no strong leader could emerge.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently concluded that, “There was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD to al Qaeda and much evidence to counter it. The notion that any government would give its principal security assets to people it could not control in order to achieve its own political aims is highly dubious.”

There is one scenario in which I think Saddam would have given his WMDs to al Qaeda. During the first Gulf War, air superiority was established within the first days of the bombing campaign and the Iraqi air force was about to be systematically obliterated. Rather than see his air force destroyed, Iraq flew all available operational aircraft into Iran. There was no love between Iran and Iraq at that time, but given a choice between losing his aircraft to allied bombing, he chose to give to them to Iran. If during the current Iraq war, Saddam had been convinced that his country was about to be conquered, he probably would have transferred his WMDs rather than let them fall into American hands. In other words, if there were to be a marriage between Saddam and al Qaeda, it would be at the point of a gun, a gun held by the United States.

Suppose that instead of invading Iraq that we had maintained the status quo or even engaged Iraq as an ally in our efforts against terrorism. Iraq would have remained an al Qaeda free zone instead of a haven for those willing to sacrifice their lives to kill Americans. The Iraqi army would have willingly attacked the Ansar al-Islam's (an Islamic extremist group with reported close ties to al Qaeda) whose base was in northern Iraq and within the no-fly zone.

If tolerating or cooperating with a despot like Saddam in the fight against terrorism seems reprehensible and that the moral convictions of the Bush administration would never allow this to happen, Think Again! We are doing that exact thing in Turkmenistan with their dictator Serdar Turkmenbashi. Watching the CBS 60 Minutes report on 4 Jan 2004 and viewing the large number of portraits of Turkmenbashi is eerily reminiscent of Iraq during Saddam’s tenure.

The US used the country of Uzbekistan as a base for the war in Afghanistan. The president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, has been repeatedly condemned for brutality and other violations of human rights. A crackdown on Islamic fundamentalists, for instance, led to prisoners being boiled alive.

One question that remains is why if Saddam hide the fact that he had no WMDs? I tend to agree with other analysts that Saddam felt threatened not by the United States but by Iran. The Badr Brigade composed of thousands of Iraqis who are supported by the Iranian Shiites is one example. The chemical weapons used by Iraq against the Iranians in their war during the 1980s may have been a deciding factor in the outcome. If you fear for the safety of your residence and you post a sign in your front yard that says Beware of the Dog, the last thing you want to do is admit that you don’t have a dog!

So, are we safer without Saddam? The answer is definitely not! Our aggressive and preemptive acts against Iraq has polarized the Islamic world and provided fundamentalists with more justification for future terrorist actions. Al Qaeda and like-minded organizations and not Saddam have been and still are the real threat against the United States.

The stated reasons for the preemptive war have been proven invalid. President Bush’s fallback position that we are safer without Saddam cannot be justified either. No doubt, the President will never admit his mistake but rather continue to adamantly defend his actions. For to do otherwise would mean the deaths of over 500 American soldiers along with thousands of Iraqi civilians were unnecessary, and that the money appropriated by Congress of over $160B ($76.5B last spring and $87B last fall) could have been used for more productive purposes.