As Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times reminds us, the Clinton Administration also believed that Saddam and Osama were linked:
[...D]uring President Clinton's eight years in office, there were at least two official pronouncements of an alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton's defense secretary. He cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.
Mr. Bush cited the linkage, in part, to justify invading Iraq and ousting Saddam. He said he could not take the risk of Iraq's weapons falling into bin Laden's hands.
The other pronouncement is contained in a Justice Department indictment on Nov. 4, 1998, charging bin Laden with murder in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
The indictment disclosed a close relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, which included specialists on chemical weapons and all types of bombs, including truck bombs, a favorite weapon of terrorists.
Think about it, folks. Saddam and Osama had a mutual enemy: Us, the Great Satan. What stupid meme about fundamentalist Islam being incompatible with a secularist Muslim state did we ever swallow that would so completely convince us that such an alliance was not at least plausible?
Osama hated Saudi Arabia because it was his home and they had expelled him. And because they were allowing themselves to be dominated by the Great Satan, thereby contaminating Arabian soil and defiling the sanctity of Mecca and Medina. And Saddam hated Saudi Arabia, too. He wished to destroy them and enrich himself on their treasure. Or did we forget that he attacked that country during the Gulf War?
This stuff isn't unimaginable; it's entirely logical (from their perspective). After all, Saddam's secret service, the infamous Makhabarat, was (and maybe still is!) sticking their fingers in the pies of every country of the Middle East and Europe for years. They are assassins and terrorists and spies and plenty else. What sort of a dumbass would doubt that they have long had dealings with terrorists to further their own goals?