Lunch at the Labs

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, instead of fighting them directly, we aided and armed the Afghan freedom fighters (i.e, the Taliban) to fight them for us. When Iraq was fighting our enemy Iran, we aided Saddam so that he could do our dirty work for us. Surely this was better than fighting the Russians in Afghanistan or invading Iran ourselves. So after the Qaeda terrorists attacked us, why didn't we just bribe and arm Iraq to go after bin Laden and Qaeda? Our history shows that we have supported tyrants before and it seems to me that Saddam had no love for those religious zealots and would have done anything to save himself. I guess it's too bad Saddam's invasion of Kuwait put us in such an untenable position.