===Threat Level Concern===
It is worth noting the following concerning a current controversy about the level of threat Saddam posed. If you consider the terrorists as various minority factions all working toward the same goal, as stated by Mr. Kraft on this page when he says, <b>"there is <i>a very dangerous minority in Islam</i> that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons almost anywhere in the world, unless <i>they</i> are prevented from doing so.</b>" It doesn't matter which of these factions would have been used to specifically target the civilized world in a nuclear or biological/chemical attack. Although recently the extent of Saddam's ties to one specific group (the Al-Qaeda terrorists) has been questioned and a recent article stated that <i>the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts,</i> the same article goes on to say concerning Al-Qaeda that <b>"it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship <u><i>like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups."</i></u></b> <ref> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/05/AR2007040502263.html </ref> Therefore, it is known that Saddam had forged long term relationships with known terrorist GROUPS (plural) and so it was not that there was no threat from any terrorists groups, just that the threat would have come from those OTHER terrorists as the threat to the collective security of the civilized world if the US hadn't taken out Saddam.
It also remains to be seen if the ties with Al-Qaeda would have remained "limited" if that group had stepped up and volunteered to take the completed nuclear weapons from Saddam (which he would have had within a year according to <i>The New York Times</i> - see the WMD section, this page) into Washington and detonate them using sophisticated and existing sleeper cell suicide bombers as Saddam was contemplating. It appears likely that Saddam would have listened and handed them his stocks of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons by his statements (see Mr. Tierney's translation on this page). From his past actions, Saddam was an equal opportunity employer for all the terrorist groups.. including those they admit in this report with whom he had <i>"long-term relationships."</i> As Mr. Kraft observes, it is many <i>"barbarian<b>s</b></i>" at our gates with sophisticated weapons of mass destruction for the first time, not only one group (Al-Qaeda.) It is global in scope, hence the reason for calling this a <b>"Global War on Terror"</b> not a "War on Terror in Iraq." As such, it is a fight for world supremacy, and the civilized world would do well not to ignore or minimize what the civilized world is fighting over.