During the weeks preceding Operation Iraqi Freedom, President Bush’s major task was to make, for the American people and the watching world, a compelling case for going to war against Iraq – by demonstrating that Saddam’s regime posed a credible threat to American security. Toward that end, Bush stated, "We know [Saddam has] got ties with al Qaeda. A nightmare scenario, of course, is that he becomes the arsenal for a terrorist network, where they could attack America and he’d leave no fingerprints behind."

But with virtual unanimity, Bush’s critics deemed this allusion to an Iraq-al Qaeda connection nothing more than a lie – designed to fabricate a palatable pretext for a war that was in fact motivated by imperialistic greed, lust for oil, and a desire to redirect Americans’ attention away from our country’s sagging economy. At the anti-war rallies that were held nationwide and around the world, organizers and guest speakers routinely dismissed claims of any Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration as American propaganda.

Numerous organizations that opposed the prospect of war raised their voices to dispute the contention that Iraq was in any way linked to terrorism. The World Council of Churches, for example, denounced the Bush administration’s plan for "pre-emptive military strikes against a sovereign state under the pretext of the ‘war on terrorism.’" The California Federation of Teachers issued a "Resolution Against War on Iraq," which declared that there was "no credible evidence that Iraq has intentions of harming the citizens of this country or that Iraq presents a threat to the United States." "[T]his administration," the statement continued, "is using the so-called ‘War on Terrorism’ to distract the American people from the vital issues they confront." Similarly, an organization called Medical Students For Peace (MSFP) condemned "pre-emptive attacks on a country that poses no immediate threat to our nation" as a "violation of the UN charter and an egregious abrogation of justice." "War," said MSFP, "will do nothing to halt al Qaeda, whose connection to Saddam Hussein remains unproven. It will only add fuel to the firebrand of their terrorist network and ultimately make the US, and the world, a more dangerous place to live in."

Many notable commentators from other nations joined the chorus as well. "We have found no evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda," said French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere. "I think if there were such links, we would have found them." According to a high-ranking source in the German intelligence community, the notion of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection was pure "nonsense" that "not even the Americans believe . . . anymore." Baltasar Garzon, Spain’s best-known investigative magistrate, said, "I have seen no [Iraqi] link to al Qaeda. No one has demonstrated it to me."

All of the foregoing statements were, of course, remarkably consistent with those of Ba’athist Party officials in Saddam’s government. As Iraqi presidential adviser Amer Rashid put it, "There’s no connection between al Qaeda and Iraq." Singing the same tune, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told ABC television, "Everybody in the region and in the world knows Iraq has no connections with al Qaeda. This false accusation [has been] repeated many times." And Iraqi lawmaker Hazem Bajilan vehemently denied all "allegations . . . raised by Mr. Bush" of an Iraq-al Qaeda partnership – allegations he characterized as disingenuous excuses for starting a war whose ultimate aim was to gain control of the Gulf region’s economy.

Opponents of the war, both in the US and abroad, largely echoed this version of reality – and in doing so, chose to ignore some well-known facts about Saddam’s ties to terrorism. For instance, it has been known for years that Saddam armed and financed Ansar al Islam, a force of some six to seven hundred extremists that operated a terror camp in northern Iraq’s no-fly zone, controlling a string of villages along the Iranian border of the Kurdish self-rule area. It has long been known that senior Ansar members trained at a camp in Afghanistan that specialized in the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons, such as ricin. And it is hardly a secret that a very senior al Qaeda leader named Abu Mussab al Zarqawi fled Afghanistan after the Taliban was defeated, and had his injured leg treated in a Baghdad hospital – surely with the knowledge of the Iraqi dictator and his secret police – after which he was sent to create a poison laboratory in the Ansar terrorist cell. The Ansar camp, incidentally, was targeted and annihilated by American warplanes a few weeks ago.

Critics of the Bush policy similarly elected to ignore his October 2002 assertion that Iraq’s terror connection was evidenced by Saddam’s longstanding protection of Abu Abbas, the leader of a terrorist group that in 1985 hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and murdered an elderly, wheelchair-bound American passenger named Leon Klinghoffer. This was the same Abu Abbas who in recent years, according to FBI counter-terrorism analyst Mathew Levitt, "was the conduit for Saddam Hussein’s financing of the [Palestinian] suicide bombers"; the same Abu Abbas whom three captured Palestinian terrorists recently admitted they had met in December 2000, at which time they were in Iraq for training in the use of weapons and explosives. Earlier this month, US commandoes tracked down and arrested Abbas in Iraq, where he had indeed been living for most of the past seventeen years – just as President Bush told us.

And now, within the past few days, the London Telegraph has reported the monumentally important discovery of top-secret documents in the bombed-out Baghdad headquarters of Iraq’s intelligence service, documents that provide "evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein’s regime." The newly unearthed papers show that in March 1998, "an al Qaeda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad . . . to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al Qaeda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia." According to the Telegraph report, "[t]he meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad." Notably, this envoy’s visit took place less than five months before bin Laden’s group bombed two US embassies in Africa.

With each passing week, our understanding of Iraq’s terrorist ties continues to grow. On April 21, the New York Times reported that a scientist affiliated for more than ten years with Saddam’s chemical weapons program told an American military team that Iraq "had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990’s, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with al Qaeda." According to the Times, this scientist, who revealed that Iraq had destroyed chemical and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, "led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq’s illicit weapons programs."

Freedom and democracy for Iraqis will be a nice change, as will the end of torture and execution in Saddam’s barbarous prisons. But the main justification for this war was always the protection of American security interests. It is becoming increasingly clear that President Bush was quite correct in asserting that the now-deposed regime posed a grave threat to that security.