Wake Up And Smell The Coffee

The real front of the War On Terror is in London, not in Baghdad. Nothing you are doing in Baghdad, none of the insane amount of money you are spending there, and no scrap of the "noble cause" of bringing Democracy to the Middle East has any impact whatever in the War On Terror.

Neither the insurgents in Iraq, nor the foreign nationals fighting beside them have anything to do with the War On Terror, except to use Iraq as a training ground for honing skills in the application of explosives, and getting some combat experience.

The real bases for terror are elsewhere, probably in Iran and western Pakistan, perhaps in Saudi, and you have so tied up our army with the foolishness in Iraq that we really can't do a damn thing about them, even if we find them. And, no, aerial bombardment of a few camps is not doing a damn thing about them, just in case you happen to find them.

The real cells for terror are in Europe and elsewhere, as are the real targets. The only way to address them is to rebuild the world cooperation which you so wantonly destroyed by invading Iraq.

The real tactics of the enemy in the War On Terror is to strike the target of opportunity which you are not guarding. It will not be conferences of government leaders, unless you stop guarding them. It will not be hijacking of airplanes to fly into buildings, unless you let airport security and fighter plane coverage get lax. And it will not be anything that is not either symbolic, as was the WTC, or full enough of people to generate massive casualties.

There will not be enough room to make small conspiracies to go after anything less under the current security climate. Big, unguarded, targets by a small number of serious conspiracies with much fewer people in the know is what we face. And what we just didn't prevent in London.

You had this to say at Fort Bragg last week:

Our mission in Iraq is clear. We're hunting down the terrorists....Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Hear the words of Osama Bin Laden: "This Third World War is raging" in Iraq.....The terrorists know that the outcome will leave them emboldened, or defeated.

It was a stupid thing to say, as today's events have just proved. It was a stupid thing to say even without today's events. Your failure to follow up properly in Afghanistan because you wanted to invade Iraq is a primary reason why the world still has Osama Bin Laden to listen to. Invading Iraq was a stupid thing to do. Not only that, in the bargain, you lied, deceived, and connived to do it, and you and your cabinet also did it stupidly and badly. Hence this mess.

You are losing the War On Terror for us.