If you have a diplomatic way that would have made Al Qaeda team up with us against Saddam, or Saddam work with us to crush Islamic terror movements, I'd really love to hear it.

First, diplomacy is not my job. That's what the Administration is supposed to be pursuing, and why we elect them and give them the power that we do.

Second, you have taken my question and turned it on its head. I said a good diplomat does not unite his enemies against him, which is apparently what has happened here. You have made it into a question of allying with one of our enemies against another. That is not what I was getting at, but it's a good way to distract from your lack of an answer, and a good way to deflect my strongly-implied criticism of the way in which this administration conducts policy.

Let me spell out the analogy, without the attachment of any ideological values to the principles, but only the practical diplomatic ramifications.

The United States : the Baathists and Al Qaeda :: the Third Reich : the United States and the USSR.

That is not to say the US is analogous to either the Baathists or the Nazis. That is not to say that the USSR is analogous to Al Qaeda. But that is to say that the United States is in the same position now that Nazi Germany was in then, that of having antagonized two ideological enemies (of each other) to the point that they can make common cause against the Greater Enemy.

At some point the evidence is going to be sufficient . . .

This is a statement of faith. I admire your faith, but I do not share it. It also does not itself constitute evidence. Just repeating that there must be evidence doesn't make it appear.

Regards--
Mary Anne