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You might also look at Zawahiri’s relationship to Saddam.
My understanding is that the Egyptian jihadists were financed by Saddam, meaning that Zawahiri would have been in effect one of Saddam’s agents.
When we speak of Bin Ladin and Zawahiri’s jihadists forming common cause in Sudan, what we are seeing is in effect Bin Ladin being recruited by Saddam. When he surrounds himself with Zawahiri’s jihadists, we have the evidence hiding in plain sight; Saddam’s men are Bin Ladin’s inner circle. We just didn’t define them as such, and as a result we don’t see it.
The 911 attack was Saddam’s revenge. It was his second attempt on the World Trade Center. The first attempt, you’ll remember, was led by two Iraqi agents. The fact that Bin Ladin may have had his own agenda (the caliphate) doesn’t change the fact that he is connected at the hip with Saddam’s men.
The idea that Bin Ladin offered to fight against Saddam is silliness. He “offered” to take command of the Saudi military. Fat chance.
It could use some more research.
One area left to flesh out in research is HOW Saddam and Iraqi intelligence operated to (a) establish and maintain an off-the-books network to and from different terrorist groups and (b) do so without Iraqi officials and terrorist leaders coordinating activities in a formal, central, joint command structure; in fact, without ANY high level Iraqi-terrorist meetings.
The operational links, before 2003, will be found predominately in the southwest provinces of Iraq, bordering both Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There one will find very conservative, Sunni fundamentalist tribal leaders as well as centuries old mercantile clans with business operations in Jordon, Saudi Arabia in addition to Iraq.
Among these people the Iraqi intelligence found more-than-willing intermediaries who (1)helped provide cover for Iraqi intelligence activities across the Middle East, (2) helped provide third-party financial conduits to terrorist groups, including many in the “Palestinian territories”, (3) used these facilities as a two-way network of information to and intelligence from the terrorists and their leaders.
This is where Zaraqawi found ready-made fertile ground for the largest Al Queda operations in Iraq after 2003; and that area was no accident. It had many pre-existing local financial fund-raising links to Al Queda, prior to 2003.
A second area of research needed on HOW Iraqi intelligence worked with terrorists must involve Saddam's use of all the Kuwaiti official government records that he stole from Kuwait before he was booted from there.
The case that stands out, I will continue with here below, but the point is that it can only be one example of what must have been hundreds if not thousands.
That case concerns a man who arrived in Malaysia a few months before the very last meeting of the principal planners of the 9/11 attacks; a meeting that took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The man arrived on a Kuwaiti passport, and immediately received a job, as a "driver", with an Iraqi "civilian" living and working in Malaysia. Maybe western intelligence did not believe that Iraqi was a "civilian" but, for whatever reason, they thought to check out his knew "Kuwaiti" employee. It turned out that the only thing that matched on his Kuwati passport with a previously archived western copy of that passport was the name. The height, weight and picture were not the same. The man was then put under surveillance. Within a few weeks he went to the Kuala Lumpur airport, picked up a man, drove that man to a meeting (we found out later it was the last 9/11 planning meeting) and went in to the meeting place with him. After the meeting the "driver" took the man back to the airport. A few days later the "driver" left Malaysia, on his "Kuwaiti" passport to one of the Gulf States. But, he, under the identity of that passport, was not recorded as arriving at the destination he was ticketed for, or anywhere else. He literally fell off the radar screen after that. Again, no "direct" link to Saddam; no operational meeting between Saddam officials and terrorist leaders; no certifiable, definitive "smoking gun". Because, Saddam had long used "unofficial" networks for his cooperation with terrorists.
Something that has gone down the memory hole:
During the invasion in 2003, troops (and embed reporters) found a chemical plant of a special nature; it was surrounded by guard towers, the plant manager was an army general, and the plant was secured by army troops. The plant was not on any of the weapons inspectors’ maps. They didn’t know about it.
The product of the plant was described as “nerve agent”.
A couple of days later, the news was updated to reveal that, no, it was just agricultural pesticide.
At least three other times, troops and embeds found stockpiles of supposed “nerve agent” at army ammo dumps; in one case the reporters on the scene got sick from exposure. And in each case after a couple of days it was reported that, no, its agricultural pesticide after all.
The difference between nerve agent and pesticide is how you use it. Spread it on Iranian troops, its nerve agent. Spread it on your crops, its pesticide. Iraqi troops used to call nerve agent “bug poison” because, obviously, it is.
So part of the reason we didn’t find any WMD is that we re-defined it out of existence.