White House assertion of terror network in Iraq may undermine own case for

Posted on Tue, Nov. 25, 2003

White House assertion of terror network in Iraq may undermine own case for war
BY WILLIAM DOUGLAS
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking at fund-raisers on Monday, offered his rationale for the American presence in Iraq.

"Iraq has now become the central front in the war on terror," he said at a Bush-Cheney fund-raiser in Cleveland and at a fund-raising reception for Rep. Anne Northrup in Louisville, Ky. "We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there, so we do not have to face them on the streets of our own cities."

It's a line that generates applause. It's also a line that makes several military and intelligence analysts cringe. They say it gives the impression that those carrying out terrorists acts against United States and allied forces are internationally organized with the power and reach to wage war on America's shores.

As Cheney and President Bush use the rhetoric, some experts say the White House is giving Americans a false impression of who the terrorists in Iraq are and their reasons for conducting deadly attacks. (snip/...)

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/7349285.htm

appeals to freeps and bushbots. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence can see through that one. It does not help that we have cheerleaders on murkin tv everyday nodding their heads in unision that this is a great concept.

"Militarily, their statements are almost absurd," said Anthony Cordesman, a national security and military intelligence expert for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There is no evidence of activity … by extremist terrorist groups affiliated with al-Qaida."

The line from the Bush administration and similar ones from some of the Democratic presidential challengers reflect a difference of opinion between politicians and soldiers in the field, Cordesman said.

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It would be nice if these military experts had more of a voice. Let the general public know that "the bulk of the terrorist threat there is coming from the locals."

One more great snippet from this article (although it overlooks WMD was major reason):

The argument by Bush and Cheney that fighting the terrorist threat in Iraq will help keep terrorists away from American cities diminishes the White House's original stance for going to war, said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst for the Brookings Institution.

Bush initially said that Saddam's brutality toward his own people, his decision to ignore countless United Nations resolutions and the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that threatened to destabilize the Middle East justified going to war.

By now describing the war as an effort to get the terrorists before they get to America, "the administration, in a strange way, discredits its own case," O'Hanlon said.

D'oh ~~That's what soldiers do. Let's see what do "Terrorists" do? What is the definition of terrorist? People who attack defensless civilians. Oh yea that is why they are all going to Iraq to attack US Soldiers. :crazy: Do these guys even listen to themselves?

between terrorism and the war with Iraq(which was the hunt for WMD).