If Iraq had been a democracy before 9-11

SCENE: An apartment in Hamburg, Germany, near the al-Qods mosque. It is winter, 1999, and 9-11 pilots Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Sheihi, Ziad Jurrah and Hani Hanjour are discussing the plot.

ATTA: The Emir wishes us to press forward with the mission! Death to the infidel!
AL-SHEIHI: Just a style note, Atta. Do you always have to speak in exclamation points?
ATTA: The Emir's will has been expressed! We shall cut off the head of the Serpent Satan!
AL-SHEIHI: Answers that, I guess.
HANJOUR: What, again, is the Emir's beef?
ATTA: Be not frivolous! The army of the infidel even now defiles the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, at the invitation of the corrupt rulers of Sacred Arabia! He shall be driven out!
JURRAH: And that's because we're going to...
AL-SHEIHI: Don't get him started...
ATTA: The Emir is clear!
JURRAH: Verse, yet...
ATTA: This is the year to finish our pilot training! In America!
JURRAH: Any idea what that FAA cert is worth on the open market? I know a guy...
HANJOUR: You're very unclear on the concept of this thing, Ziad.
ATTA: The Emir awaits us with The Brain in Islamabad!
Al-SHEIHI: We have to go there again?
ATTA: Final instructions before we move to realization of jihad!
HANJOUR: One thing, Mohammed...
ATTA: Yes?
HANJOUR: (clearing spit from eye) Are you aware Iraq is a democracy, kind of?
ATTA: I am aware that a pro-Iranian Shiite government has replaced Saddam, yes! I've got CNN too!
HANJOUR: Well, how's this thing supposed to work now?
Al-SHEIHI: I'm not seeing the difference, Hani. I'm from the UAE.
JURRAH: Lebanon, here.
ATTA: Egypt!
HANJOUR: Yeah, but it's a democracy, kind of, in the heart of the Arab world.
AL-SHEIHI: Heart? Where'd you learn anatomy, Baywatch?
JURRAH: Ankle, maybe.
HANJOUR: But with the swamp drained, how do we even exist?
AL-SHEIHI: You mean, how did four or five guys from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Lebanon and Yemen come to Hamburg, become radicalized by exposure to the West, then get recruited by the Kuwaiti Khallid Sheikh Mohammed and the Saudi Osama bin Laden, then arrange to get about 15 additional guys from Saudi Arabia as muscle on a hijack plot, all of which had nothing to do with Iraq? Is that your question?
HANJOUR: Yes!
AL-SHEIHI: Now you're doing it. I don't know, Hani, why don't we leave that question to the Americans.