The United States is amidst a war in Iraq. Entry into the war by the U.S. was justified on multiple grounds. One such justification was the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Political leaders have described an Iraq that has provided aid and comfort to terrorist operatives. As late as June 17, 2004, Vice President Richard Cheney argued, “There clearly was a relationship. It’s been testified to. It goes back to the early ‘90s. It involves a whole series of contacts, high-level contacts with Osama Bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officials.” The issue continues to be debated. What has gone largely unnoticed is a bit of history that closely links Al Qaeda with the situation in Iraq in a fashion rarely discussed.

The Al Qaeda/Iraq Link
In 1979, the Soviet Union began an effort to invade and conquer Afghanistan. The Afghanis and their allied groups (including Osama Bin Laden’s network and the United States) were successful in repelling the Soviets ten years later. Bin Laden’s associates set-up a theocratic dictatorship in Afghanistan ruled as an Islamic state. Bin Laden had such designs for other nations including his home nation of Saudi Arabia.
A strong requirement of the Bin Laden’s brand of Islam is that non-believers (often called “infidels” by Islamists) are unwelcome on land that is decreed holy. Saudi Arabia houses two of Islam’s holiest sites: Mecca and Medina. To avoid entry of non-believers onto this holiest of Islamic lands, Bin Laden offered the manpower, training and equipment he had procured in Afghanistan to protect Saudi Arabia following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait; a small, neighboring country with great oil reserves and desirable access to the Persian Gulf. Bin Laden strongly resisted American or other “infidel” presence on this Arabian holy land even to protect against the designs of a secular and oppressive regime. The Saudi government, uncertain of Bin Laden’s capabilities and wary of an extremist presence on their land, rebuked his offer.
Nations from all over the world sent soldiers to the region to fight off Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and fend off any threat to Saudi Arabia. Further, U.S. forces remained long after the Persian Gulf War was won. This may have been to defend against Hussein’s violations of U.N. sanctions (e.g., the no-fly zone), to more quickly secure the region should an aggressive regime act up (e.g., Iran), or simply inertia. Whatever the rationale for their continued presence, non-believers on holy land angered Bin Laden and his followers immensely. This represents the first of Bin Laden’s great laments against the west; great in that they would spark the first acts of violence specifically targeted at the U.S. The primacy he gave to this issue is evident from responses he gave during media interviews granted in the middle through later 1990s. He said,

When the American troops entered Saudi Arabia, the land of the two holy places [Mecca and Medina], there was a strong protest from the ulema [religious authorities] and from students of the sharia law all over the country against the interference of American troops. This big mistake by the Saudi regime of inviting the American troops revealed their deception. They had given their support to nations that were fighting against Muslims.
…
Now the people understand the speeches of the ulemas [Muslim scholars trained in Islamic law] in the mosques – that our country has become an American colony. They act decisively with every action to kick the Americans out of Saudi Arabia. What happened in Riyadh and Khobar [when 24 Americans were killed in two bombings] is clear evidence of the huge anger of Saudi people against America. The Saudis now know their real enemy is America.

I believe that sooner or later the Americans will leave Saudi Arabia and that the war declared by America against the Saudi people means war against all Muslims everywhere. Resistance against America will spread in many, many places in Muslim countries. Our trusted leaders, the ulema, have given us a fatwa that we must drive out the Americans. The solution to this crisis is the withdrawal of American troops … their military presence is an insult for the Saudi people.
The Independent, Interview by Robert Fisk, 1996

We have declared jihad against the US, because in our religion it is our duty to make jihad so that God’s word is the one exalted to the heights and so that we drive the Americans away from all Muslim countries. As for what you asked whether jihad is directed against US soldiers, the civilians in the land of the Two Holy Places [Saudi Arabia] or against the civilians in America, we have focused our declaration on striking at the soldiers in the country of The Two Holy Places. The country of the Two Holy Places has in our religion a peculiarity of its own over the other Muslim countries. In our religion, it is not permissible for any non-Muslim to stay in our country. Therefore, even though American civilians are not targeted in our plan, they must leave.

We ask about the main reason that called for this explosion [the bombings of United States troops in Riyadh and Dhahran]. This explosion was a reaction to a US provocation of the Muslim peoples, in which the US transgressed in its aggression until it reached the qibla of the Muslims in the whole world. So, the purpose of the two explosions is to get the American occupation out [of Arabia]. So if the U.S. does not want to kill its sons who are in the army, then it has to get out.
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It is known that every action has its reaction. If the American presence continues, and that is an action, then it is natural for reactions to continue against this presence. In other words, explosions and killings of the American soldiers would continue. These are the troops who left their country and their families and came here with all arrogance to steal our oil and disgrace us, and attack our religion.
Interview by Peter Arnett, 1997

The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control.
Frontline, 1998

We can learn more of Bin Laden’s thinking from his own writings. Telling is the title of a key epistle he issued on August 1996, considered his first international fatwa . It was called the “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.” Naval War College Associate Professor Ahmed S. Hashim wrote, “…the focus of Bin Laden’s anger in the 1996 epistle was the continued American “occupation” of the land of the holy places…” In the declaration, Bin Laden wrote of the importance of unity among Muslims who found many reasons for in-fighting. He encouraged them to ignore their differences and to focus on one thing—removing “infidels” from the holy land. He wrote:
If there [is] more than one duty to be carried out, then the most important one should receive priority. Clearly after Belief (Imaan) there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land. . . . The ill effect of ignoring these [minor] differences, at a given period of time, is much less than the ill effect of the occupation of the Muslims’ land by the great Kufr [unbelief].
In 1998, he wrote a declaration entitled, “World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”. In it, he wrote:
Since God laid down the Arabian peninsula, created its desert, and surrounded it with its seas, no calamity has ever befallen it like these Crusader hosts that have spread in it like locusts, crowding its soil, eating its fruits, and destroying its verdure; and this at a time when the nations contend against the Muslims like diners jostling around a bowl of food.
Further evidence of the primacy with which Bin Laden viewed this issue exists. For example, a top international relations scholars, Robert Jervis, recently wrote, “Bin Laden had attacked American interests abroad and from early on sought to strike the U.S. homeland. His enmity stemmed primarily from the establishment of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia…”
One may argue that this revealed lament may not reflect Bin Laden’s sincere sentiments. For example, the non-believer’s presence in the holy land may have been an excuse to take on the only remaining superpower after the Soviet Union’s demise. Just as Bin Laden believes the Soviet Union’s demise to be the fulfillment of Islamic destiny (and, therefore, his duty to have promoted), perhaps he believes the powerful U.S. must now be similarly humbled. Or, Bin Laden’s words may disguise a much more personal sort of vengeance for the substantial financial loss and forced ouster he suffered primarily at the hands of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. while taking refuge in Sudan.
While we cannot know for sure what drove Al Qaeda’s violent attacks toward the U.S. and Islamist laments are many (e.g., U.S. support for Israel), what can be said with certainty is that the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia was, time and again, a foremost, expressed source of great consternation for Bin Laden and this followers. It was Hussein’s ambitions to rule a greater Arabia that brought the American soldiers to the Muslim holy land. The U.S. presence, perhaps more than anything else, sparked Bin Laden’s hatred of the U.S. and motivated the escalating tit for tat game between the west and Bin Laden’s terrorist organizations.

War with Iraq
For Al Qaeda, this culminated in massive attacks, organized for years that we have come to know as September Eleventh. For the United States and our (shifting) coalition of allies, the retaliation continues to this day. As an element of the retaliation, the U.S. has invaded and overseen regime change in Iraq. The rationale for this action included the threat Hussein posed to allies in and around his nation, stockpiles of WMD, efforts at attaining further WMD (such as the attempt to purchase banned missiles from North Korea), violations of United Nations sanctions, high-level contacts with terrorist organizations and others. Given a study of Bin Laden’s motivations, the most relevant rationale for removing Hussein from power may be to secure the region so that a U.S. military presence would no longer be needed. That’s just what happened in the area most in contention, Saudi Arabia.
In April 29, 2003, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. However, he was unwilling to admit that the withdrawal had anything to do with the laments of Islamic terrorists. London Daily Telegraph reporter David Rennie wrote,

Withdrawal of “infidel” American forces from Saudi Arabia has been one of the demands of Osama bin Laden, although a senior U.S. military official said that this was “irrelevant”.
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Despite American insistence that the withdrawal had not been “dictated” by Al Qaeda and that bin Laden was “irrelevant”, there can be little doubt that undercutting a central plank of Al Qaeda’s platform is one of several advantages offered by withdrawal from Saudi Arabia (4/30/2003).

Al Qaeda targeted the U.S. when it did primarily because of “infidel” presence in the holy land. This presence was motivated by Iraqi aggression and, specifically, the effort to protect Saudi Arabia from meeting a fate similar to Kuwait.
In this way, perhaps Iraq and Al Qaeda are linked to a greater extent than has been discussed in public or elite discourse. This link does not show cooperation between Iraq and Bin Laden, as has been sought by some, but it does tie our policy toward Iraq to the effort to defeat Islamic terrorism.

Justification for U.S. Policy?
Does this link offer a rationale for the U.S.’s entry into Iraq? It does not seem so from the Bush administration’s rhetoric, which has been virtually absent on this issue. We can speculate as to why. Perhaps the Bush administration did not regard the military presence in Saudi Arabia as important when considering the U.S.’s post-9/11 policy toward Iraq. There were certainly other issues at play that provided rationales (informed or not) for our invasion.
On the other hand, it is possible that the administration was unwilling to focus on this issue because it would seem to grant Bin Laden a victory. His, perhaps, greatest contention with the U.S. had been resolved in a fashion that he had called for time and again; withdrawal of American soldiers from the holy land. This alone is too simpleminded in that Bin Laden certainly would not have wanted, as a trade-off, ten of thousands of troops in Iraq. Nonetheless, the presence of non-believers in Saudi Arabia is no more and this may have been more than U.S. officials would like to admit.
Certainly, from the Bush administrations point-of-view, military action to neutralize Hussein would have been deemed essential toward the long-term stabilization of the Middle East and, thus, the eventual defeat of Islamic terrorism. One may note that stabilization has hardly come as yet. However, an Iraq with Hussein and, later, his progeny in power along the threat they would have posed to the Saudis and other of the regions U.S. allies would likely have postponed the possibility of stabilization only longer.
Seen in this light, the Bush administrations targeting of Iraq may very well have stemmed from a larger strategy to defeat Bin Laden and his networks of terror. A strategy that included removing one of their main tools for recruitment and rationales for attack. The administration’s silence on this motive leave us only to conjecture as securing Saudi Arabia may simply have been an unintended (and as Jervis explains, ironic ) consequence of the war with Iraq.

Conclusion
The Al Qaeda/Iraq link, as described by officials in the Bush administration, has been an allusive one. The 9/11 Commission report found scant evidence of a possible attempt at an Al Qaeda/Iraq alliance. But, perhaps, this is the wrong sort of link to dwell upon. Action against Iraq in response to 9/11 can be better justified by a need to stabilize the region so that a U.S. military presence is not required on the holy land of Saudi Arabia. What is often ignored is that the removal of these forces is among the most important of Al Qaeda’s laments.
It is unclear how salient this link was in the minds of Bush administration officials. It certainly does not reveal itself in their rhetoric. There may be reasons for this (e.g., not wishing to seem as if the terrorists got what they wanted). Or, this link may not have calculated very highly in their deliberations. Regardless, the removal of Saddam Hussein, in that it secures Saudi Arabia, is a big step toward removing the impetus for further terrorist activities. Although removing one primary motivation for Islamic terrorism toward the west may have caused many others, it still remains to be seen if short-term sacrifices will beget long-term gains.