Don’t get it wrong when you are "schooling" others…Sunnis and Shia have worked together…Iraq anyone?

Dean Barnett provides a somewhat helpful primer on the Sunni and Shiite divisions in Islam. But he gets an essential piece wrong.

9) What really worries me is that Iran will get a nuclear bomb and then give it to Al Qaeda. Am I wrong to have such a concern?

Right church, wrong pew. So to speak. Iran and Al Qaeda will never work together. Ever. Iran is run by fundamentalist Shiites. Al Qaeda is composed of the world’s most radical Sunnis. They hate each other even more than they hate us. Iran would never give Al Qaeda a weapon of mass destruction because if they did, it would be every bit as likely to detonate in Tehran as in Manhattan.

But Iran has its own terror group that is more lethal, better funded and better organized than Al Qaeda. Iran runs Hezbollah. If Iran wanted to give a weapon of mass destruction to a terrorist group, it wouldn’t need to outsource the project. Its own in-house terrorist brand is a lot more efficient at what it does than the cave-dwelling losers who comprise Al Qaeda. Source: Townhall.com::Blog::Blog

They have and are collaborating with each other. Indeed even the truly dense 9/11 Commission made note of the connections as noted by Washington Post. Please also note that this was the sixth hit in Google in a search for Iran Al Qaeda connections. Washington Post:

While it found no operational ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network had long-running contacts with Iraq’s neighbor and historic foe, Iran.

Al Qaeda, the commission determined, may even have played a “yet unknown role” in aiding Hezbollah militants in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia, an attack the United States has long blamed solely on Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors.

9/11 Commission has this to say about the links between Sunni Al Qaeda and Shia Iran.

Assistance from Hezbollah and Iran to al Qaeda
As we mentioned in chapter 2, while in Sudan, senior managers in al Qaeda maintained contacts with Iran and the Iranian-supported worldwide terrorist organization Hezbollah, which is based mainly in southern Lebanon and Beirut. Al Qaeda members received advice and training from Hezbollah.

Intelligence indicates the persistence of contacts between Iranian security officials and senior al Qaeda figures after Bin Ladin’s return to Afghanistan. Khallad has said that Iran made a concerted effort to strengthen relations with al Qaeda after the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, but was rebuffed because Bin Ladin did not want to alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia. Khallad and other detainees have described the willingness of Iranian officials to facilitate the travel of al Qaeda members through Iran, on their way to and from Afghanistan. For example, Iranian border inspectors would be told not to place telltale stamps in the passports of these travelers. Such arrangements were particularly beneficial to Saudi members of al Qaeda.¹²⁰

Our knowledge of the international travels of the al Qaeda operatives selected for the 9/11 operation remains fragmentary. But we now have evidence suggesting that 8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi “muscle” operatives traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001.¹²¹

In October 2000, a senior operative of Hezbollah visited Saudi Arabia to coordinate activities there. He also planned to assist individuals in Saudi Arabia in traveling to Iran during November. A top Hezbollah commander and Saudi Hezbollah contacts were involved.¹²²

Also in October 2000, two future muscle hijackers, Mohand al Shehri and Hamza al Ghamdi, flew from Iran to Kuwait. In November, Ahmed al Ghamdi apparently flew to Beirut, traveling-perhaps by coincidence-on the same flight as a senior Hezbollah operative. Also in November, Salem al Hazmi apparently flew from Saudi Arabia to Beirut.¹²³

This is important because we have still 5 years down the road failed to identify the enemy. We are still casting about naming this or that sect inside of Islam the enemy. It might be helpful to remember the Marines. They are always faithful we as citizens owe them nothing less. But how can we be faithful when we forget that Shia Terrorists murdered 241 of them? That stands as the same day single worst loss of life in the Marine Corp since WW2…yea worse than Korea and Vietnam in one day.

Finally Shia and Sunni terrorists are collaborating in Iraq against our troops right as we debate this in the states. Absolutely they can collaborate and we forget this at our peril. We collaborated with the Soviets in WW2 because by ourselves we might not have been able to take down the Nazis. Our enemy’s are not stupid, they know apart they can be defeated but together they can defeat the obstacle to all, Sunni and Shia’s, dreams.