macqueen -- there's no doubt that the fighting in Iraq has drawn terrorists from all over the Middle East, but the belief that Saddam had nothing to do with terrorists and Al Queda prior to the war is a flat falsehood. Not only was Saddam doing things like paying death money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, he provided safe haven and medical treatment for several well known terrorists. In addition, as the hundreds of thousands of documents gathered during the war are slowly (too slowly!) being translated, the link between Saddam and terror organizations becomes clearer. Check out this site: http://www.iraqdocs.blogspot.com/ Most of the translated docs refer to WMD issues, but keep scrolling, there's terrorist related stuff in there.
What's more -- all it took to find this was a simple web search.
Saddam was not involved in the attacks of 9/11 and his overall contribution to terrorists was not as all-encompassing as that which existed in Afghanistan, but he was a supporter and, given Iraq's physical position in the ME and the money which would have been available to him, his ability to cause trouble would have been huge.
paracowboy -- exactly. The measure of an army's effectiveness should hinge, at least partly, on whether it fights wars in somebody else's backyard or close to home. I vote for distant wars.
Jim