Howdy

I've been away for a few days. I was up in Michigan for my grandfather's funeral. I'll have more on that later but right now I gotta talk about the little bit I heard of President Bush's press conference this morning. I swear today, in answer to a question about intelligence concerning the Iraq war during it's planning, he said that whatever we do militarily in the mideast we are going to have to fight Al Quaeda and fighting Al Quaeda is a major part of the war on terror so no matter what we do militarily over there it is an essential front of the war on terror. In fact, from what he said, I gather that maybe the complete botching of the occupation of Iraq may in the long run become seen as essential to fighting the war on terror. By his logic we can do anything there we want because it will be opposed by Islamic radicals and then becomes part of the war on terror. Amazing. How is he still in charge?

Here is the quote I am referring to. This argument is a perfect circle and those are rare in nature but becoming more common from the mouth of our idiot president: "As to al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda is going to fight us wherever we are. That's their strategy. Their strategy is to drive us out of the Middle East. They have made it abundantly clear what they want. They want to establish a caliphate. They want to spread their ideology. They want safe haven from which to launch attacks. They're willing to kill the innocent to achieve their objectives, and they will fight us. And the fundamental question is, will we fight them? I have made the decision to do so. I believe that the best way to protect us in this war on terror is to fight them.

And so we're fighting them in Iraq, we're fighting them in Afghanistan, we've helped the Philippines -- Philippine government fight them. We're fighting them. And this notion about how this isn't a war on terror, in my view, is naive. It doesn't -- it doesn't reflect the true nature of the world in which we live.

You know, the lessons of September the 11th are these: we've got to stay on the offense; we've got to bring these people to justice before they hurt again; and at the same time, defeat their ideology with the ideology based upon liberty. And that's what you're seeing, and they're resisting it.

I think it ought to be illustrative to the American people that al Qaeda is trying to stop new democracies from evolving. And what should that tell you? That ought to tell you that we're dealing with people that have an ideology that's opposite of liberty and will take whatever measures are necessary to prevent this young democracy from succeeding.

The danger in this particular theater in the war on terror is that if we were to fail, they'd come and get us. You know, I look at these reports right here in the Oval Office. For people who say that we're not under threat, they simply do not know the world. We are under threat. And it's in our interest to pursue this enemy."