  I just finished Stephen Hayes' urlLink The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America . My initial reactions are urlLink here (at the end of the post). My overall grade: B/B+. As I said earlier, it's well written, clear, and Hayes does a good job of helping the reader keep straight some of the more similar sounding Arab names. The book relies heavily on what's now known as the urlLink "Feith memo" --though it does not rely on it exlclusively--it does make up a bulk of the claims that support the book's thesis.
The Feith memo (and Hayes' reporting/reading of it) has been urlLink criticized --Hayes answers the majority of them in the book--as well as urlLink here and urlLink here . Hayes is careful to note that much of what he is reporting might well turn out to be false--he is appropriately skeptical and does a good job of noting that intelligence officials sometimes differed over the value/importance of the intelligence he writes about.
The book does a better job at its job of convincing the reader of a plausible connection because of this--to Hayes' credit. Each claim/report cited (though without footnotes--which kind of bugs) in the book should be read with a certain amount of skepticism. Not cynicism--skepticism. I found the book's thesis all the more powerful if I asked myself: "This may not be true/reliable, but if it is , what should the response be?
" With that in mind Hayes' point becomes clear (it was clear before, but so much of it got lost in the panty-bunching that accompanied the response to the TITLE of the initial Weekly Standard article "Case Closed"--people went batshit crazy assuming that Hayes was reporting that OBL and Saddam were like urlLink Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari . They were not, nor does Hayes make the claim. Instead he presents the frighteningly plausible notion that despite their initial ideological differences--both Saddam and bin Laden have at various times made overtures to each other (and in some cases, reached agreements).
Given this--would it have been wise to leave an Iraq headed by a ruler willing (however reluctantly) to ally with UBL for the purposes of attacking America? It's a brave man who can answer that question in the affirmative. As for things I didn't like about the book--as I said, it relies on the Feith memo a great deal--which is always problematic when an author or reporter relies on single sources disproportionately. His lack of footnotes or an index is also annoying--though forgiveable. He state early on that since much of what he is reporting is from classified information and other intelligence information--he can't cite to it. But where such information is available through an open source--he cites to that source. Whether he cites to ENOUGH open sources--I can't say. But if he's to be criticized for anything--that would be it. An index would have also been nice since while it's a short book (186 pages)--lots of the names repeat or are similar sounding and a little bit of guidance or reference would've been helpful.
Again, all in all I liked the book and I think it raised several important questions that should be examined further before people simply write off the Iraq/Al Qaeda connection as being some wacky neocon thing. After all, what if you're wrong? 
