BCCI: The Osama - Saddam Link?

Now that the U.S. Congress is investigating the truth of President George W. Bush's statements about the Iraq war, they might look into one of his most startling assertions: that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Critics dismissed that as an invention. They were wrong. There was a link, but not the one Bush was selling. The link between Hussein and Bin Laden was their banker, BCCI. But the link went beyond the dictator and the jihadist -- it passed through Saudi Arabia and stretched all the way to George W. Bush and his father.

From the article here by Lucy Komisar, author of a chapter on BCCI in "A Game As Old As Empire".

I dunno that this is entirely accurate. My understanding is that OBL was just one of the many Saudis who flocked to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets with the Mujahadeen, and nothing more than that. He wasn't high up enough in the struggle to be privy as to how the CIA shifted money around. And, frankly, this whole "America funded bin Laden" story is getting old: we didn't give him a dime, per se.

(A excellent take on how the funding was done can be found in "Charlie Wilson's War", which explains how the "Lufkin Liberal" and a CIA Officer on the outs engineered the whole thing.)

But... the article is full of intriguing info as regards to the extended Bush clan, its ties to secret political deals and the kickbacks they got along the way.

Maybe someone should ask some questions about that "link," after all.