There was no direct connection between them, no, but members of alqaeda *were* being safe harbored within Iraq. And like I pointed out, it was already on the agenda that we were going to remove saddam since 1997. 9/11 just kicked that plan into gear.
People always make the point about the rise of isis, but they never acknowledge the pure misery the iraqi populace was living in under saddam. For some reason people only care about iraqi's dying if it was during the war, the day-to-day misery nobody says peep about. Isis only has a fraction of the resources saddam had at his disposal. Isis is obviously horrible, but they don't run the whole country. Saddam ran the whole country, and if you criticized him he would send goons to abduct you and your family, and force you to execute your own family members. I'm gonna take a risk here and say it's good that doesn't happen anymore.
The iraq invasion was totally botched and mismanaged, but it's not like there weren't lots of reasons that removing saddam was a just thing to do that had nothing to do with WMD's.
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