redblueamerica.com

In the words of the Dick "So".

As long as Bin is still out there, Bush and the boys can keep the American sheep in fear.

Then the war machine can keep chugging along, and the war profiteers can keep getting rich.

The cycle goes on and on.

I withdraw the Bin Laden comment. My bad.

However: "But would all the troops amassed in Iraq be scouring the countryside of Pakistan Obama-style right now if they were not in Iraq? Sadly, no."

But they might not be in Iraq, either.

The Pentagon's profile of AQI's members -- based on interviews with 48 captured members -- looks something like this:

So what brought Mr. AQI to Iraq? At the mosque, he met a man who could tell Mr. AQI just wanted to belong to something. That man told Mr. AQI he had something Mr. AQI needed to see. Very often, according to Colonel Bacon, it was an image from Abu Ghraib. Or it was a spliced-together propaganda film of Americans killing or abusing Iraqis. The narrative that weighed heavily on Mr. AQI, Colonel Bacon said, was that it was his "religious duty go to Iraq," where he would serve as "an avenger of abused Iraqs."

But Iraq wasn't what he thought it would be. Mr. AQI wasn't an infantryman, where he'd bravely stand and fight Americans, he was pressured into being a suicide bomber. Nor were his targets the Americans he wanted to hit -- they were the Iraqis he came to avenge. According to Colonel Bacon, in some cases, Mr. AQI was happy to be in American custody, where he would no longer cause Iraq any more pain.

Let that sink in for a moment. For Mr. AQI has a lesson for us. Counterfactual conditionals are always problematic, but in all likelihood, according to MNF-I's own profile, if the United States. were not in Iraq, Mr. AQI would be back in his taxi in Algiers or Jedda. Were it not for Abu Ghraib -- which, of course, never would have happened had we not invaded -- Mr. AQI would never have felt that it was his religious duty to kill Americans. And were it not for the war, thousands of Americans and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive, right now, and all without a propaganda windfall that spikes terrorist recruitment for the extremist lurking around the mosque trying to generate new Mr. AQIs. And what is true of our foreign-born Mr. AQI is all the more true of the perhaps 95 percent of AQI that's Iraqi Sunni. Not one of them would have any reason to be a member of AQI if George Bush did not give him one.

Jim, have you read the GAO report? It's not about the "big picture" of the war on terror at all -- you're right about that. But it's not so narrow as to be just about Osama Bin Laden, either, so you're wrong about that.

It's about Al Qaeda. You know -- the group that, unlike anybody in Iraq, actually attacked us. And the GAO report is pretty definitive on this point: We've been letting them rebuild strength in the tribal areas of Pakistan, to the point that they're in a good position to attack us again. And it's clear -- though the GAO report doesn't say this -- that we haven't given this our full attention because of distractions in Iraq. How do we know this? Even the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has basically said so.

We may be killing terrorist enemies "by the bushelful" in Iraq -- but even the Pentagon has suggested that a lot of those people were motivated to become terrorists ... by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It's like flooding a field, letting it start to dry out and proclaiming victory in the war on water.

To (quickly) take the questions one by one:

Does the United States need a comprehensive plan to win the war on terrorism generally and defeat Al-Qaeda in particular?

Yes. We have one. Bush is implementing it, however imperfectly in certain ways. But no wars are perfect in their short-term execution. That is especially true in this new war. But the fact that terrorist enemies are dying by the bushel full in Iraq is a good start.

Does the GAO report lend credence to critics who say the Iraq war is a distraction from the "real war"?

No. The GAO doesn't have the long view. It's not in that bureaucracy's make-up and mission. They'd have said the European Theater of World War II was a distraction from avenging Pearl Harbor.

Will the war on terrorism end with the capture or death of bin Laden? Or is the war bigger than Al-Qaeda?

No, and yes. Bin Laden's eventual death will not end the global jihad against the United States. The war was bigger than bin Laden before 9/11, and will continue to be a generational struggle.