Philadelphia Daily Delusions

If I wrote the hare-brained editorial that appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News today, I'd want it left unsigned as well.

A fisking, anyone?

THESE PEOPLE have no shame. Their contempt for democracy is so great they will stop at nothing to undermine it. Their adherence to fundamentalist beliefs that blinds them to reality is frightening. They must be stopped.

And that's just the Republicans.

Nothing like getting your mind-numbed partisanship out front.

Let's start with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Yesterday, Cheney bashed those who voted for Democrat Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate primary, claiming that these votes would encourage "al Qaeda types" to think that "they can break the will of the American people."

The idea is that since 18-year incumbent Joe Lieberman lost based on his support for Iraq, Americans opposing the war are waving a white flag of surrender to terrorists.

This is stunningly ignorant logic, as well as annoyingly consistent with the Bush administration's fundamentalist myth that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden - a claim by now well-discounted, most notably by a presidential commission.

Mr. Anonymous Editorialist, are you trying to tell us that Ned Lamont's cries to pull the troops home now—exactly what Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and the late Abu Musab Zarqawi have called for—is not the exact position of the world's leading terrorists?

The simple fact of the matter is that no matter how you try to shade it, the headlong retreat—or "redeployment" or whatever you want to call it—favored by the radical left is precisely what al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups desire. We know that, because they've said so, repeatedly. The only stunning ignorance displayed here is your own ignorance of the fact that both the terrorists and the Democrats agree that they want the U.S to retreat from the Middle East and stop killing terrorists.

Further, it is precisely the headlong "redeployment" that John Murtha called for from Somalia and heeded by Bill Clinton that resulted in the terror attacks of September 11.

Dead terrorists don't cause problems, and retreating from live terrorists inspires them to attempt greater acts of terror. What part of that logic are you incapable of understanding?

In addition, Mr. Anonymous Editorialist has his fingers crossed and hoped no one would actual check his facts, which would reveal that the 9/11 Commission Report did not say that Saddam's Iraq did not have ties to Osama's al Qaeda. In fact, it said something else entirely.

Bin Ladin also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Ladin had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States. Whether Bin Ladin and his organization had roles in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the thwarted Manila plot to blow up a dozen U.S. commercial aircraft in 1995 remains a matter of substantial uncertainty.

Communications between senior officers of organizations are ties, ladies and gentlemen, whether or not they cooperated on attacks against the United States.

Iraq may not have played a role in the terror attack against America on 9/11, but al Qaeda and Saddam's Iraq certainly had ties to one another dating back to 1994, as stated by then CIA Director George Tenet:

• Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
• We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade.
• Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa'ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.
• Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa'ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
• We have credible reporting that al-Qa'ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
• Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.

Since the 9/11 Commission Report was issued, even more documents have shined a light on the connections between al Qaeda, their Taliban hosts, and Iraq. Mr. Anonymous Editorialist can say Iraq had no ties to al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden if he wants, but rational people looking at the still-accumulating evidence will be hard-pressed to draw that same conclusion.

But back to the editorial:

And yet the presidential fog machine has continued to belch out its Iraq-al Qaeda-link fumes to the extent that a recent poll suggests that 64 percent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to al Qaeda. More people than ever now believe, according to a new poll, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

No ties in the preceding paragraph has been walked back to "strong links" in this one. I've give this to the writer; when it comes to headlong retreat, he practices what he preaches.

It goes without saying that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction; it is a simple incontrovertible fact. He used thousands of them in his 1980-88 war with Iran, and gassed thousands of Kurds in a single four-day strike on Halabja in 1988. Iraq maintained and declared WMD stockpiles at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, and an Iraqi general says his men moved WMDs out of Iraq into Syria in the weeks before our 2003 invasion. Anonymous may discount it, but as evidence slowly accumulates, even more people will believe in Iraq's WMD capability because it did exist, and it was never fully accounted for.

Ironically, the number who believe in the al Qaeda link is almost precisely the same number of Americans - 62 percent - who believe we are bogged down in Iraq.

For Cheney - and other Republicans like GOP National Chairman Ken Mehlman - to suggest that those Americans are encouraging terrorism is reprehensible.

And yet, we have to go back to the essential fact that John Murtha's 1993 call for retreat from Somalia is directly responsible for Osama Bin Laden's decision to attack America. I certainly know it is not the Democrat's intent to encourage terrorism, but that fact—and it is a fact—remains that that is exactly what their position has done, and will continue to do.

Cheney's comments came out a day before British intelligence officials announced they had thwarted a major terrorist attack. Surely Cheney was aware of the plot and the work to thwart it, and was no doubt aware of the timing of yesterday's announcement.

To exploit a very real terror threat that could have led to major casualties, and to even indirectly implicate Americans who were exercising their democratic right by going to the polls and making a choice borders on the criminal, to say nothing of the insane.

Has Cheney completely lost it?

Mr. Anonymous has no shame. While more than eager to attack Cheney for politicizing events, he studiously avoids his own Party's attempts to politicize things as well. Should we wait until his next editorial comes out calling Teddy Kennedy or Harry Reid insane or asking if they have "completely lost it?" Probably not.

The latest terror scare is upsetting enough: It is bound to lead to havoc and chaos both domestically and internationally. It could damage the economy if fears on flying are sustained. It reopens the profound wounds of 9/11, a scab we should figure by now will never completely heal.

But the real terror is this: While our Vacationer- in-Chief and his vice president shut down dissent, and discourage questions about the way our government has directed our intelligence and military resources toward a single target in Iraq, we are no closer to understanding or dismantling the threat of al Qaeda.

They "shut down dissent," eh? I spent all this effect to fisk an overly-dramatic editorial, and the guy who wrote it will be inside a Halliburton-run concentration camp before he can even read this. Darn.

Interestingly enough, it now seems that how our President has led our intelligence and military resources may have had a direct impact in thwarting this latest attack, as the very intelligence programs that the New York Times is trying to destroy may have provided crucial intelligence. Of course, ensconced in irons in a cell somewhere near Allentown, Mr. Anonymous will never know or admit to that.

Cheney's remarks underscore just how unsophisticated our understanding of terrorism is. We have no more understanding of the global forces at work that lead so many to want to bomb and destroy innocent lives than we did five years ago.

America's latest crisis is not what happened in Connecticut; it's what was going to happen in airplanes over the Atlantic.

The immoral and ridiculous claims coming out of the Bush administration's reign of error could ultimately be responsible for the kind of casualties that al Qaeda can only dream of.

Actually, terrorism is very simple to understand. It isn't a matter of nuance. Islamists want the whole world to subscribe to their way of thinking, and those that don't, they want dead. That is why Islam partitions the world into Dar al Islam, the House of Submission for the true beleivers, and Dar al Harb, the House of War, where infidels must convert, or die. It's actually quite straightforward. Even a Sea Monkey can grasp the basic concept, even if a Philadelphia Daily News editorialist finds it too taxing.

Claims don't kill people, Mr. Anonymous Editorialist.

Terrorists do.