[antimedia] antimedia: Eery similarities

[antimedia at lists.powerblogs.com]

Posted by antimedia:
Eery similarities
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1143916068.shtml


   Much has been made of Saddam Hussein's secularism and how the
   fervently religious jihadis of Al Qaeda could never make covenant with
   him. "Experts" proclaim that this is sufficient proof to confirm that
   Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and terrorism.
   They could not be more wrong (as "experts" often are.) On page 24 of
   the Iraq Perspectives Project report (yes, it's been very slow going
   for me), this passage appears.

     Almost from his first days in power Saddam sought ways to create an
     empire commensurate with his vision of himself as the new Saladin.
     It is ironic that Saladin was born in Tikrit (like Saddam Hussein),
     and was ethnically a Kurd. Saddam became convinced that he too was
     charged with leading the Arab world in liberating Jerusalem. Once
     that task was completed he would be positioned to establish a new
     pan-Arab caliphate with himself as Caliph (leader of all Muslims
     everywhere). In a 1990 meeting with the leader of the Palestinian
     Islamic Jihad, he was even encouraged to declare himself Caliph, to
     which he responded "It is too early for that."
     For the new Saladin nothing was impossible, even driving the United
     States out of the Middle East. In April 1990, shortly before Iraq's
     invasion of Kuwait, in a bizarre but revealing conversation with
     Yassar Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation
     Organization, Saddam made it clear that he was seeking a direct
     confrontation with the United States in the near future. He
     announced to a thoroughly attentive Arafat:

     We are ready for it, we will fight America, and, with God's will,
     we will defeat it and kick it out of the whole region. Because it
     is not about the fight itself; we know America has a larger air
     force than us...America has more rockets than us, but I think that
     when the Arab people see real action of war, when it is real and
     not only talk, they will fight America everywhere. So we have to
     get ready to fight America; we are ready to fight when they do;
     when they strike, we strike...^26

   You could substitute Osama bin Laden for Saddam Hussein and the
   narrative would be identical. (As always, the transcription, and any
   errors therein, are entirely of my doing.)
   To insist that two men with the exact same goal would never work
   together is the heighth of stupidity. It displays both an ignorance
   and a hubris about the Middle East that is all too common among
   westerners -- especially "experts". They would be thoroughly
   discredited by now were they not propped up by a complicit and
   ignorant media that drools and slobbers over their every word.