Interesting point on the Iraq War

Sebastian Holsclaw made a statement justifying the war in Iraq, in response to Orin Kerr;s questions, that I had not heard before:

Saddam had become an enduring hero and symbol of the West’s inability to follow through when met with the slightest resistance. This dangerous idea is what allowed Al Qaeda to believe that it could strike in New York City and be safe in Afghanistan.

I wonder how true that is. Given Osama's most consistant demand was for U.S. forces to leave the Gulf Region (and Saudi Arabia in particular) I can certainly imagine a level of admiration on his part for Saddam, even though Saddam was not properly religious and was the cause of the U.S. forces being there in the first place. I expect that Mogadishu had a more signifigant impact on Osama's belief that he would be safe (assuming he did believe that) but Iraq's defiance of the U.N. certainly is similar in some ways to what happened in Somalia.