The community theatre of terrorists

If Al Qaida was Broadway...

Saddam Hussein's regime did have ties to terrorists - but those who got his support were either secondary players with narrow agendas or former A-list members well past their prime - not groups with global ambitions.

That is the conclusion of several experts on terrorism in the Middle East, one of whom said Friday that Hussein was running a "hospice for retired terrorists" and had nothing to offer a sophisticated network such as al-Qaida in any case.

"They didn't need help from Iraq, which was at best a third-rate intelligence service, a gang that couldn't shoot straight," said Peter Bergen, a scholar at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies. "The Iraqis killed Iraqi dissidents overseas. That's all they did. They were good at that. That's it."

Ironically, a similar conclusion was reached by the U.S. State Department in annual reports on terrorism issued in the years before the Bush administration decided to wage war against Hussein in 2003.