This business about an Iraqi connection to the Oklahoma City bombing keeps getting bandied about the blogosphere, and now the traditional media is beginning to pick up on it.
As much as the Tom Clancy-reading side of me wants to see such a connection, the Occam’s Razor side of me says this is a load of BS.
Would it be possible that the FBI missed a connection between a major act of terrorism and Iraqi extremism despite the fact that would be the first connection that would logically come up? Somehow, even as inept as the FBI sometimes is, I can’t quite see that happening. The investigators of the Oklahoma City bombing weren’t idiots – if there was a credible connection someone would have found it. If that’s the case then the only option is some elaborate conspiracy to hide the truth.
The thing about conspiracies is that none of them are air-tight. You can’t hide something like Iraq being behind Oklahoma City or aliens in freezers in Nevada without someone spilling the beans sooner or later. Things that big have a way of coming out, especially when so many people would by necessity have to have been in the know.
There’s also the question of motive. McVeigh and Nicols don’t seem the type that would be willing to work with a bunch of Arabs. McVeigh fought in the Gulf War, and despite his hatred of the American government, there’s no evidence that he’d be the type willing to work with the Iraqis later on.
Occam’s Razor says that the simplest explanation is usually the best. It’s a lot easier to believe that Tim McVeigh wanted to reenact The Turner Diaries by blowing up a federal building in the heartland of America than it is to believe in some conspiracy by foreign powers to use McVeigh as a patsy to do the same.
Still, if John Ashcroft really is investigating this theory, then there could be more to it. However, the evidence is circumstantial at best. Unless someone can start showing phone records, pictures, or something that corroborates and confirms that there was some connection between Timothy McVeigh and the Iraqi government any attempts to draw such conclusions should be taken with very large grains of salt.
