Michael Barone poses an excellent question today: why are Liberals (not so much Democrats) obsessively wedded to the view there could never be a Saddam/Al Qaeda connection?:

The issue is historical now, but still worth exploring. Why, for two distinct groups of Americans, has it become a matter of conviction held with religious intensity that there cannot have been any relationship between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq?

You can read his theories on this subject at Real Clear Politics this morning. My thoughts on this are probably less kind. So before I finish reading Barone’s article here they are. I believe the Bush Derangement Syndrome liberals cannot affort, emotionally, to admit they have been rampaging on false premises for 4 plus years now. They have invested so much credibility into needing to be superior, to be right, the idea of facing their false assumptions and their tunnel vision logic is too much.

How does someone go back and find the very foundation of their being was a serious, personal error? How does Kos go back and realize something inside him, some issue he was dealing with, caused him time and time again to dismiss contrary evidence to what he wanted to believe to the point the guy lives in an alternate reality? I pick on Kos because he has one of those sad souls so far out there, running on hate and personal insecurity, that I think it is impossible for him to honestly readjust.

In the world of the Bush Derangement Syndrome suffering liberal, they are smarter and purer than everyone now in power, and most of the nation. All that is left is for the rest of us morons to wake up and finally realize what utter geniuses these liberals have been all these years.

In our world, these people will have been fools following a fool’s errand all this time. Fools extremely full of themselves, to say the least, as the inaccurately predicted one failure after another, one crime after another, in an endless cycle of Chicken Little. So how could someone who lives in a fantasy where they are the pinnacle of humanity, face a reality where they just your normal people who have been kidding themselves, and quite reactionary when others tried to point out to them the error of their assumptions.

Liberals hate the rest of America with their strong family values, their strong religious ties, and their strong bond to history and traditions of all types. Liberals are perpetual teenagers, the worst part of the teenager – the mindless rebel. They want to throw all tradition away so they don’t have to compete on anyone else’s conditions or assumptions. Their hate of all things traditional is probably due to their desire to have been right to throw it all away and do things differently.

Having a major strain of Juvenile Delinquent in me myself, I can relate to the pull between tradition and unfettered options. But I can also see where re-learning things the hard way is a waste of time. In throwing away the tradition we throw away the lessons learned. You can start without any rules at all, but sooner or later you will understand why it is not good to spit into the wind.

I think liberals have had a problem with anyone explaining how things should be done, or taking advise from people steeped in a subject. Like teenagers they become insta-experts in areas they disdain (can you believe the number of field generals that have popped up on the anti-war left?).

So, my answer to Michael Barone is the reason liberals are so wedded to the idea that there can never be any between Saddam and Al Qaeda is it is a bridge too far for some who would see their entire life model shattered to have to admit they were wrong about this one, obvious thing. Barone is close to this view when he writes:

The career professionals, with their many years of training in the subtleties of the Middle East, have developed a vested interest in the notion that religious Wahhabis like al-Qaida could never collaborate with a secular tyrant like Saddam. If alliances could be formed across religious lines, what use would all their learning be?

It would, of course, be useless.

Update: Lorie Byrd at Polipundit comments in the Barone piece today and garnered a lot of comments – worth a look in my opinion.