The War on Terror

This scathing critique of the Bush Admininstration's war on terror is right on point, 
 
Why the Right is Wrong About Iraq and al-Qaeda
  by tgirsch 

In the wake of the 9/11 Commission's finding that there is "no credible evidence" that Iraq and al-Qaeda ever had a "collaborative relationship" with respect to attacks against the United States, there's been a great deal of scrambling on the right side of the blogosphere to throw all the tenuous links that have been found against the wall and see what "sticks." What, specifically, are we hearing about? A statement on Meet the Press, which has since been invalidated by the Administration. A 1999 report that Hussein offered Asylum to bin Laden (an offer that bin Laden rejected, mind you). A 1998 letter that does little more than acknowledge that contact was made between Iraq's intelligence agency and al-Qaeda. The presence of Zarqawi in Iraq (even though intelligence officials say that Zarqawi operates separately from al-Qaeda, not as part of it).

There are two things that I notice here, one small, and one big. The small thing is that none of these things, even if taken together, in any way contradicts or discredits the 9/11 Commission's report. The report acknowledges that contacts were made, but that there's no evidence that a working relationship ever resulted from any of those contacts. Considering that the most recent of these reports is from April of 2003, it ought to be pretty safe to assume that the 9/11 Commission knew about them. If they were as important as the blog-hawks seem to claim they are, you would think that the Administration's members would have taken pains to point them out when they were being questioned. So it's reasonably safe to say that the bi-partisan, GOP-controlled commission didn't consider these links to be indicative of a meaningful working relationship.

 
But there's something larger here, something that not many people (particularly on the right) are talking about. It has to do with why the Administration repeatedly made claims linking Iraq with al-Qaeda in the first place, dating back to 2002. You see, back then, we had an active military campaign in Afghanistan, with wide bipartisan and public support. Al-Qaeda was seen (by the public as well as by the intelligence community) as the greatest threat to American security, and it was obvious that Afghanistan -- a well-known al-Qaeda haven -- would be the logical starting point.

The problem is, the Administration -- for whatever reason -- decided that Iraq should be the next step, and to most of the public (and the world), this seemed like the Underwear Gnomes at work (Step 1: Invade Iraq; Step 2: ????; Step 3: World Safer from Terror!). So the Administration needed to convince the American people not only that Iraq posed a terror threat, but that Iraq was a more important enemy to fight than any other potential enemy in the war on terror. As such, it was imperative that the Administration convince us that Iraq was actively working with al-Qaeda, actively training them, and actively harboring them.

 
Even before our invasion, the Administration's logic on the Iraq issue raised a lot of eyebrows. If WMDs were the big threat, then North Korea seemed like a far more compelling next target, what with them lobbing nuclear-capable warheads over Japan. If terrorism were the big threat, there are half a dozen countries -- including several of our "friends" -- that jumped out as being more compelling targets than Iraq. So the administration needed both things -- weapons of mass destruction and an active and meaningful relationship with al-Qaeda -- to frame the war in terms that the American people would accept. Sure, there are more dangerous targets in terms of WMDs, and sure, there are more dangerous targets in terms of terror. But when you combine WMDs with an active al-Qaeda link, now you're talking about a compelling target.

Everyone (war skeptics included) expected us to find WMDs, but the fact that we haven't found anything substantial makes the al-Qaeda connection even more critical. And now that the 9/11 Commission's report has dealt yet another blow to the dubious al-Qaeda claims, the right is absolutely scrambling to do damage control. The best they can come up with is five-year-old reports of tenuous connections that have mostly been dismissed by the intelligence community as inconsequential. But they miss the larger point completely. The idea that Iraq was the "logical next step" in the war on terror -- or even an important part of it -- has already been completely dismembered...

That argument has already been lost; the only thing that remains to be seen is whether or not they'll ever admit it, and how much kicking and screaming will it take."