Last week's desecration of a Shi'ite shrine moved Iraq towards civil war. Abdel Bari Atwan, who has had unique access to Osama Bin Laden, explains why Al-Qaeda wants to divide Islam. I spent three days with Bin Laden in Tora Bora, the only western-based journalist to spend such a significant amount of time with him, before or since. I talked at length to him, slept next to him in his cave and shared his modest food.
Paradoxically, the strike on American home territory in September 2001 was a setback to Bin Laden's long-term plan. Al-Qaeda lost support among more moderate Muslims, who sympathised with the victims. It lost its safe haven and training camps in Afghanistan.
Abu Qatada told me that the September 11 attacks were opposed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi was soon to shoot into the limelight as the central figure in this story. For, two years on, the arrival of 150,000 US troops in Iraq in March 2003 created exactly the turning point in Al-Qaeda's history that Bin Laden had dreamt of.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...
That kills the link conservatives have tried to make between Saddam and 911. I heard this journalist on TV a couple days ago. He said that Zarqawi did not want to lose his base of operations in Afghanistan so he only favored a decapitation strike on the US that would leave America unable to effectly respond and didn't see 911 as such an attack. The journalist said he didn't want to lose his base in Afghanistan. But, things turned out for him anyway, because Bush gave him a far better base in Iraq.