That was the very first thing that came to mind. . . . The right wing BS to justify the Iraq war by saying we’re fighting them there so we don’t fight them here. . . . as if there was any reason why they couldn’t attack us here other than the mere convenience of us being over there so they can save on travel expenses.

These guys won’t give up using whatever they have to fabricate reasons for us to be afraid and justify their obliteration of everything this country once stood for.

And yet, the people claiming to make political decisions based on Morality vote for THEM?!?!?!?

Al Qaeda are gonna get you unless your brave President Bush can stop him.

Martin Gifford.

This is more BS justification to remain and control Iraq’s oil.

So much for barrel boy going over the falls. He must be stuck in a guckert of mud.

Hating the Repukian liars daily

Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq before the war because Saddam Hussein was a decidedly irreligious tyrant whose intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, snuffed out any threats to his rule. Al Qaeda would definitely be classified as a threat both to Saddam and his goal for a pan-Arabic association under the Ba’ath party.

As far as I know, the only documented presence of al Qaeda in Iraq before the invasion was in a Kurdish area in the north bordering Iran and possibly Afghanistan, a place he couldn’t control because of the no-fly zones and the defacto Kurdish self-rule. Yes, I suppose western Iraq is like the far side of the moon. But the far side of the moon isn’t exactly a great staging area for anything. Maybe training, but with Saddam’s control, it would have been very difficult to do anything on a meaningful scale–those things take time for recruits to get the info through trusted channels. And there have been a lot of interesting conspiracy theories about his WMDs being there, or traveling through there to go to Syria. But come on . . .

Al Qaeda’s MO seems to be to engage failed states, usually during civil wars (post-Soviet Afghanistan, Somalia come to mind) and install/control wahabist governments there. Sound familiar?

Bad as Saddam was, it would have been better for the US to have his tyranny as an odious bulwark against al Qaeda, the 2400+ lives we’ve lost there, the cheap gas, our credibility as a world power and champion of individual rights. Not even Saddam managed to make the millions of refugees and loss of what could be hundreds of thousands of Iraqis the way we have. We’ve out-Saddamed Saddam. Best thing to do is get out and let the ex-Ba’athist Sunni troglodytes take care of al Qaeda in Iraq for us. They’re already fighting openly.

Saaaay, maybe that’s where all the DoJ-WH e-mails have disappeared to.
Somebody call Insector Closeau… it appears a crime might have been committed.

Oh, no, no, no! This means that the rationale for the war is bogus!

I’m shocked!