The recent decline in violence in Iraq has seems to have given conservatives cover to not only defend the “surge,” but even to attempt to rehabilitate the decision to go to war in the first place.

Preparing the ground, Tony Blankley writes that “in September 2007, more than 19,000 insurgents had been killed by coalition forces since 2003″ :

Of course, most of those 19,000 killed insurgents were not foreign terrorists, but local Iraqis moved to action by our occupation. However, according to studies by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and by the Defense Intelligence Agency, foreign-born jihadists in Iraq are believed to number between 4 and 10 percent of the total insurgent strength. So it is reasonable to assume that we have killed — as of nine months ago — between 800 and 1,900 non-Iraqi terrorists who otherwise would have been plying their trade elsewhere. It only took a couple of dozen to commit the atrocities of Sept. 11.

But no, it’s not reasonable to assume that at all. While it’s probably true that some of the extremists drawn to Iraq would have attacked elsewhere, the evidence is overwhelming that, for the majority of foreign fighters in Iraq, the U.S. occupation itself was the decisive factor in their radicalization and mobilization. It only becomes “reasonable” to assume that all of the foreign terrorists killed in Iraq would have become terrorists absent the American invasion of Iraq if one is desperate to justify a disastrous war, as Blankley is. Read more

After last week’s Supreme Court decision granting terror detainees the right of habeas corpus, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) blasted the decision as one of the worst ever. Raising the specter of Osama bin Laden being tried in civil court, McCain invoked the Nazi war crimes trials to declare that bin Laden should be denied habeas rights at all costs, Supreme Court be damned:

There was no habeas at Nuremburg and there should be no habeas for Osama bin Laden. … Let me be clear, under my administration Osama bin Laden will either be killed on the battlefield or executed.

McCain has invoked the Nazi trials at Nuremberg before to uphold his position on habeas. Unfortunately for McCain, in that instance it was to push for granting those rights to terror detainees, as he explained to Tim Russert in 2005:

Now, I know that some of these guys are terrible, terrible killers and the worst kind of scum of humanity. But, one, they deserve to have some adjudication of their cases. And there’s a fear that if you release them that they’ll go back and fight again against us. … [I]f it means releasing some of them, you’ll have to release them. Look, even Adolf Eichmann got a trial.

Those accused of Nazi crimes at Nuremberg were not tried under U.S. law, and thus did not have explicit habeas rights. But Nazis unquestionably received fairer trials than terrorist detainees today. The fact that some accused and tried at Nuremberg were found innocent and released shows that Nuremberg offered a practical habeas right. By contrast, the Pentagon has indicated it could continue to imprison a Guantanamo detainee indefinitely, even if he were found innocent by a military tribunal.

What, exactly, does McCain find so frightening about bringing Osama bin Laden to court? He is unquestionably guilty and will be found guilty. A fair trial would only add moral authority to his conviction. Or is moral weight another aspect of the war on terror that McCain doesn’t care about?