IRAQI RESISTANCE

Yahoo: US-led occupation brings frontline against al-Qaeda to Iraq: analysts

The United States struggled before the war to convince the world there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda network, but five months of US-led occupation of Iraq may have created precisely such an unholy alliance.

Stripped of their privileged positions under the ousted dictator's brutal regime, Saddam's henchmen may finally have thrown in their lot with their ideological adversaries in Osama bin Laden's terror network to wage war on their common foe two years after the suicide hijackings in the United States, analysts say.

A quartet of arrests made by Iraqi police immediately after a massive car bombing that killed 83 people in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf last week provided the hardest evidence yet of the fledgling marriage of convenience between Saddam and the militants.

Two of the detainees were Saudis espousing al-Qaeda's militant brand of Islam. The others were former henchmen of the ousted dictator.