Ansar al Islam was part of the Al Qaeda network. It was NOT tied to Saddam. There are reports showing that Bin Laden and his operatives did meet with Iraqi officials, but they never worked together. There was no real relationship between Bin Laden and Saddam. Saddam was too secular for Bin Laden. Cheney hyped up the links between Saddam and Al Qaeda and eventually he had to admit there were no ties between the Iraqi government and Bin Laden. Bin Laden was too radical for Saddam Hussein. Hussein didn't want Sharia law and Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network (including Ansar al Islam) did.
If Saddam Hussein wasn't such a dick we could have worked with him. He was a foil to Iran and could have been a foil to Al Qaeda, but when the oil for food program was going on Saddam's people started meeting with Bin Laden's people, and the fear was that Saddam was going to bankroll Bin Laden to commit acts of terrorism against the USA, just like Saddam was bankrolling Hamas for suicide bombing against Israel.
Plus back then Saddam was hoarding the food in the oil for food program and letting his own people starve. Does anyone remember how back then the Far Left was claiming the USA was making poor Iraqis starve because of the program? Saddam Hussein was keeping the food, yet the Left-wing was blaming the USA for it. I don't recall exactly, but he may have been trying to starve out the Shiites and the Kurds, because he hated those two groups.
