Now, I’ll first repeat my firmly held position that John McCain is no great shakes, but come on. How do you, with a straight face, suggest that Obama, who even CNN admits largely owes his political career to someone who targeted his fellow Americans with explosives, should be held harmless for that association? How do you then, in the very next breath, suggest that McCain and Palin are somehow responsible for what one or two unhinged nutbags say or do while attending a rally?

Further, when most of the Democratic party online has spent the last five years calling Bush a war criminal, a traitor, or worse, how do you feign indignation when someone suggests that calling our military a bunch of baby killers is tantamount to treason? Here is Obama’s exact quote in context:

Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban, so we’ve got to get the job done there [in Afghanistan], and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages, and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.

Compare that to John Kerry’s now infamous winter soldier testimony:

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command….

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

This portrayal of our military as a bunch of mongols ravaging the countryside with little regard for “killing civilians” and “air raiding villages” is epidemic in the Democratic Party. It is part of the anti-military talking points. You can’t possibly act surprised that people take Obama’s remarks as an attack on our military.

Yet we’re supposed to look the other way when a man who wishes to be Commander in Chief denigrates our troops?

At the same time, we’re supposed to give a candidate a pass for associating with a man who apparently believed, and remains without remorse for the belief, that the only appropriate use of military power should be against civilians working in our own government? A man who, after bombing his countrymen, still says he wishes he could have done more for his cause.

Honestly? You will defend Barack Obama’s associations with that man, and his own disdain for our troops, yet you will try, with flimsy reasoning, to connect the GOP ticket with some random crowd members?

What if the roles were reversed. What if John McCain had spent 15 years cuddling up to Tim McVeigh? What if Terry Nichols had held a campaign kickoff event for J-Mac in his home? What if McVeigh had worked to secure tens of millions of dollars for an initiative that John McCain ran? Would you give him a pass? I doubt it.

While I am shocked by the Democrats’ indifference to Ayers, I also think the events of the Vietnam war were, as Obama says, 40 years ago. People have moved on.

However, I do not see how you can ignore that, also ignore your candidates defamation of our military’s service on behalf of our nation, and then try, laughably, to make McCain and Palin responsible for some random nutjob in a crowd of thousands.

It makes you look hypocritical and ridiculous.

In January of 2005, President Bush was asked if we would leave if the Iraqi government indicated it wanted us out. His reply? “Absolutely. This is a sovereign government. They’re on their feet.”

Last week, when Nouri al-Maliki announced his support for Obama’s withdrawal timetable, and signaled the Iraqi people were ready for us to leave, the Administration had an opening to live up to those words. The Administration should have immediately issued the following statement:

Today, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced the desire of the Iraqi people to see a US withdrawal. We have always stated that the US is operating in Iraq only as long as the Iraqi government requests our help. We now see the Iraqi government requesting our departure and we will respect their wishes.

I have asked our military advisers to prepare a plan for the immediate withdrawal of US troops, and I expect to see 50% of our troops stateside within the next six months with a full draw down to be completed by the end of 2009.

This would have done three things. First, it would have taken withdrawal off the table as a political issue the Democrats could demagogue. Second, it would have lived up to the word of the Administration that they would leave when the Iraqis asked. Third, it would have completely deflated one of two issues that will weigh heaviest on the general election – the other being the economic turbulence.

For McCain, it would have offered a chance to shift to support withdrawal without being seen as a flip-flopper. He could simply say that he, too, agrees that the Iraqi move toward self-determination is the final condition for US withdrawal. Having met that, the US will honor its obligation and remove its troops.

Having missed this opportunity, both McCain and the Republicans have a problem in that we are now the occupying force that so many have alleged. If we insist on staying, despite clear statements from Iraqi leadership that they are ready for us to leave, the GOP is in the unfortunate position of having to justify our continued presence in a country that has said they want us out. That’s a much worse position to be in for the general election than simply supporting an unpopular war.

However, as you lift your Corona tonight, don’t toast Mexican Independence, or even Mexican victory over the French. Instead, toast the end of the Civil War.

The Mexican-American War had destroyed Mexico’s economy and left it poor and weak. In debt to many nations, Mexico was invaded by the Brits, the French, and Spain. Having reach an agreement with Britain and Spain, Mexico showed them the door. France, however, saw a greater threat in the US and a way to resolve it through Mexico.

France invaded Mexico as a means to interfere with the civil war we were fighting. If they could take Mexico, they could use the resources there to aid the South and keep the US divided. A US spilt in two would be less a threat than a unified nation. The French tried to take Mexico City and the resulting battle at Puebla kept them from doing so.

Unable to conquer Mexico, the French were prevented from resupplying the South. This gave the North time to build up its army and eventually win the war. While certainly not the definitive cause for the North’s ultimate victory, the Battle of Puebla played more of a role in our own Civil War than it did in Mexican history. The Battle of Puebla is a footnote in Mexican history and the holiday is largely ignored anywhere but in Puebla and in the US.

To put this in perspective, imagine if the rest of the world decided to ignore our recognition of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and instead declared the date of the Battle of Bull Run to be American Independence Day. Forget the fact that Bull Run wasn’t even a battle in the Revolutionary War. Forget the fact that it was a regional skirmish that had nothing to do with the eventual outcome of the larger conflict. What you’re left with is a gross misunderstanding of the relative importance of the day within the context of the culture.

Yet every May, we declare the fifth “Mexican Independence Day” and use it as a chance to drink Mexican beer and margaritas and spend the night throwing up guacamole, chips and fajitas.

Don’t be that guy. Tonight, when you drink, toast the end of the Civil War, and give thanks to the Mexicans who helped make it all possible. That’s the best way to commemorate Cinco de Mayo.

A Wired article titled Suicide Bombing Makes Sick Sense in Halo 3 falls into the second category.

I used to find it hard to fully imagine the mind-set of a terrorist.

That is, until I played Halo 3 online, where I found myself adopting — with great success — terrorist tactics. Including a form of suicide bombing. …

I know I’m the underdog; I know I’m probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I’m poor.

Specifically, I’m poor in time. The best players have dozens of free hours a week to hone their talents, and I don’t have that luxury. This changes the relative meaning of death for the two of us. For me, dying will not penalize me in the way it penalizes them, because I have almost no chance of improving my state. I might as well take people down with me.

Or to put it another way: The structure of Xbox Live creates a world composed of two classes — haves and have-nots. And, just as in the real world, some of the disgruntled have-nots are all too willing to toss their lives away — just for the satisfaction of momentarily halting the progress of the haves. Since the game instantly resurrects me, I have no real dread of death in Halo 3.

The author does specifically state that he is not trying to “trivialize the ghastly, horrific impact of real-life suicide bombing” or to “gloss over the incredible complexity of the real-life personal, geopolitical and spiritual reasons why suicide bombers are willing to kill themselves” because this is “impossibly more nuanced and perverse than what’s happening inside a trifling, low-stakes videogame.”

And yet he follows that disclaimer with this statement:

I’ve read scores of articles, white papers and books on the psychology of terrorists in recent years, and even though I have (I think) a strong intellectual grasp of the roots of suicide terrorism, something about playing the game gave me an “aha” moment that I’d never had before: an ability to feel, in whatever tiny fashion, the strategic logic and emotional calculus behind the act.

This may be one of the strangest pieces of ‘journalism’ I have seen in some time. To argue that you understand terrorism because you have “read scores of articles, white papers and books” and have a “strong intellectual grasp” betrays your completely egocentric worldview. I have read books on terrorism, have taken courses on the subject from renowned experts in the field, and studied the subject with great vigor, but I claim to have no sense of what causes someone to take another person’s life for a political goal.

The one clear difference the writer ignores is the fact the person he’s fragging “from beyond the grave” in Halo was actually trying to kill him in the game. Most often terrorists in real life do not strike directly at other combatants. They strike at innocent women and children.

Thompson’s piece might make sense if terrorism were confined to attacks on military targets (as they sometimes are in Iraq), but falls desperately short of anything approaching a rationale conclusion when weighed against the actions of terrorists who strike at families dining at Sbarro.

Drawing analogies is dangerous if it’s easy to poke holes in your comparison. In this case, it’s all too easy. To compare, in any way, the irrational acts of depraved terrorists bent on killing innocents to make a political point and the spastic tactics of poor video game players does little to make a point. It does more to teach others how not to make a case.

I’ve asked for her permission to strip the identifying details and share them with others, as I think they’re a really good read. The notes she sends are almost completely non-partisan, and rarely mention the political implications of the war or make an effort to “cheerlead”. They’re just her thoughts on her current situation, and they’re pretty interesting

I’ve posted the full text after the jump, but thought I’d highlight my favorite part of her most recent dispatch.

The unusual becomes commonplace and the completely bizarre becomes completely acceptable.

Even the interaction between people is different. Social norms do not apply. There is an intense need for human connection that drives relationships between people to form quickly and sometimes in unconventional ways. For example, at lunch the other day, I ran into a fellow passenger from my maiden rhino voyage into the IZ. I had not seen him since the morning of our arrival, but he recognized me and asked to join me at the table. Two hours later I found myself able to recite back the intimate details of his life: Where he has lived in the States over the past fifteen years; the names, ages and pursuits of his two sons; the circumstances of his divorce; and the people he most often calls back home.

A few evenings prior, I was dining with a co-worker when an army captain sat next to us, showed us pictures of his grand-daughter‚Äîhis “reason to get home”‚Äî told us all about his wife and children back in Indiana, gave us a full account of the last twenty years of his life, and shared with us his political affiliation and views on the 2008 primaries. He kept commenting on what a pleasure it was to carry on a normal conversation with two-young women.

There is Romanian special operations captain who I occasionally meet for coffee in the evening, simply because he tells me that I am the only person he speaks with outside the office and how he looks forward to it every day. I don’t know what he does here in Baghdad, but I do know all about his beautiful daughter, the reasons for his divorce, the grueling physical and psychological training he endured to obtain his commission, and the songs currently on his I-pod playlist.

It can take years to build relationships in the real world. Here, it may take only hours.

Click through to read more.

To: Michael Turk
Subj: The Zone, The New Normal, and Human Connection (Baghdad Dispatch 3)

Greetings friends,

I am now into my third week in Baghdad. I have adjusted to the heat, my stomach is now immune to the questionable bottled water, and I am finally sleeping through the night, despite the constant hum of air traffic above. As I have learned very quickly, any victory achieved here, however small, should be received with much exaltation. So I am rejoicing the fact that I have somewhat successfully acclimated to the strange new world I now call home, in what I am told is record time.

It has been quiet here these past few weeks. (I am ferociously knocking on my desk as I type this, of course.) Almost uncomfortably quiet. With the confluence of so many threat-inducing events (the Petraeus/Crocker testimony, the commencement of Ramadan, and now the tumult over the latest Blackwater incident), many people expected September to be a rough month. It seems, however, that the Madhi Army is abiding by Al Sadr’s command and is standing down for a period of time. But whether or not the relative quiet is only a temporary reprieve or a latent and hopefully lasting effect of the troop surge, it has put many people at ease and made the IZ a comfortable environment to ease into, if such a thing is possible.

Speaking of the IZ, I have mentioned it only in passing in the last two email updates, so I now owe you all a full account of what life is like in the strangest place that I have ever lived.

The Zone, The New Normal, and Human Connection

The IZ (International Zone) is the roughly three-and-one-half square mile patch of land located in the Karkh beladiyah (or district) of Baghdad. It is nestled in a curve of the Tigris River. (Imagine if you will that the Tigris is an arm bent at a ninety degree angle. The IZ is located inside the elbow.) The Embassy Compound (where I live, work and spend most of my time), is the smaller and more secure area immediately surrounding one of Saddam’s former palaces. The compound houses the palace, the gym, the DFAC (there is an obscene amount of food here, but that says nothing about its quality), the post office, the laundromat, and that’s about it.

The palace itself is an enormous concrete monstrosity that in a brilliant twist of irony is now home to the largest U.S . mission abroad. The interior has some spectacular rooms–one which houses a mural of Iraqi scud missiles shooting into the heavens. (It’s utterly bizarre.) There is a dimly lit rotunda beneath a blue dome off of which the two wings of the palace radiate that is quite impressive. And there are several atriums and gallery-type spaces with palatial ceilings and detailed tile work that are quite a sight to behold. But what Saddam possessed in power, he certainly lacked in taste, because the palace is also filled with some of the most heinous furniture, light fixtures and decorations that I have ever seen. These Saddam-era relics are now mingled with hundreds of computers, cheap plywood desks, file cabinets, and every other manner of office equipment, adding to the oddity of the environment. Yet, in walking any of the long marble halls, one can tell that in its prime, this was once a majestic residence.

Several thousand civilian, military and contract personnel spend their days busily typing away at their desks in the makeshift embassy offices. These personnel sleep and shower in the trailer communities surrounding the palace–communities with names like, “The Palms”, ” Riverside” and “Embassy Estates”–as if we could be fooled into thinking that we live in condos and not trailers. (Yes, I sleep in a trailer and work in a palace–I’m still trying to figure this one out.) Enormous palm trees sprout out of the dusty earth between the trailers, shading plastic lawn chairs and picnic tables where people gather to eat and relax on the evenings that we are not warned to stay indoors. And of course, there is the infamous palace pool‚Äîthe social hub of the compound‚Äîwhere you can not only swim laps and play water sports, but where the embassy social office organizes barbeques and outdoor movies.

In case you think for a moment that you have stumbled into a resort and not a combat zone, there are enough tanks, humvees and up-armored SUVs driving around to shock you back into reality. Equally as sobering are the concrete t-walls that enclose the entire compound itself, and also many of the structures within the IZ. They block the horizon and any view of the city, so that almost everything in sight is either dust or cement. In many ways, this place can feel somewhat like a prison.

Your world is very small if you limit your movement to the Embassy Compound, alone. If you have access to a car, you have the “freedom” to travel around IZ, which is also home to various military installations, the PX, shops where local Iraqi vendors sell their wares, a very shady liquor store, contractor compounds, the embassies of several other nations, several Iraqi ministry buildings and complexes, the Al Rasheed Hotel, and the remnants of Saddam-era Iraqi monuments. Traveling around the IZ is not necessarily easy and not always safe, but it is imperative if you want to work, attend meetings, and not go completely stir-crazy.

Since you can borrow a car and drive around, you can get a speeding ticket in the IZ. You can also play horseshoes or sunbathe by the pool, go rug shopping, take beginner salsa lessons, and even run a 5k with 200 other people zealous enough to go jogging at 6am. Meals are served four times a day, but you can drink coffee any time you like at the 24 hour coffee shop (the Green Bean), which will serve you up any imaginable coffee beverage a la Starbucks. If you need a drink and you are not in the military, you have several options that do not require a trip to the shady liquor store: there is the RSO bar, the OFF-Site bar, the FBI bar, and the British Embassy (which apparently throws a kicking happy hour every Thursday night). I will have a full report on this one next Friday morning.

In the IZ you are in the minority of you are: a woman; not carrying a weapon; wearing a suit or heels; not wearing a uniform; and not covered in dust.

There is constant noise. Helicopters (too often medivacs) and military planes roar above with regularity, and there are periodic distant booms that the seasoned resident will recognize immediately as car bombs or IEDs. But there is also the frequent sound of laughter and on weekends (which are Fridays and Saturdays), the sounds of makeshift garage bands—playing covers of every imaginable song—spilling over the concrete t-walls and filling the hot night air.

This is a place of striking contradictions. But over time, these are the things that become familiar and the things that become “normal”.

You soon fail to notice that the person beside you at dinner has a loaded beretta in their belt. The signs around the compound that say things like, “Alcohol consumption while armed is prohibited”, and “Deadly force authorized. Stay back 100 meters”, and “No sweaty PT gear in the DFAC”, cease to be so amusing.

As a female, you learn to not be uncomfortable because three tables of soldiers stop eating to gaze at you as you wait in the lunch line, or that the team of Iraqis filling sandbags outside your hooch, stop working to stare at you as you pass by in your tank top and shorts on the way to the gym. Counting the steps from your trailer to the nearest “duck and cover bunker” becomes routine. And it no longer seems morbid to display your blood-type on your body armor. In fact, it no longer feels odd to wear body armor.

The unusual becomes commonplace and the completely bizarre becomes completely acceptable.

Even the interaction between people is different. Social norms do not apply. There is an intense need for human connection that drives relationships between people to form quickly and sometimes in unconventional ways. For example, at lunch the other day, I ran into a fellow passenger from my maiden rhino voyage into the IZ. I had not seen him since the morning of our arrival, but he recognized me and asked to join me at the table. Two hours later I found myself able to recite back the intimate details of his life: Where he has lived in the States over the past fifteen years; the names, ages and pursuits of his two sons; the circumstances of his divorce; and the people he most often calls back home.

A few evenings prior, I was dining with a co-worker when an army captain sat next to us, showed us pictures of his grand-daughter‚Äîhis “reason to get home”‚Äî told us all about his wife and children back in Indiana, gave us a full account of the last twenty years of his life, and shared with us his political affiliation and views on the 2008 primaries. He kept commenting on what a pleasure it was to carry on a normal conversation with two-young women.

There is Romanian special operations captain who I occasionally meet for coffee in the evening, simply because he tells me that I am the only person he speaks with outside the office and how he looks forward to it every day. I don’t know what he does here in Baghdad, but I do know all about his beautiful daughter, the reasons for his divorce, the grueling physical and psychological training he endured to obtain his commission, and the songs currently on his I-pod playlist.

It can take years to build relationships in the real world. Here, it may take only hours.

While it seems strange to reveal the intimate details of one’s life in such a short period of time, it also feels necessary in a place like Baghdad. There is a visceral need to feel that you are surrounded by friends because you know that just beyond the t-walls, there are plenty of people who are your enemies.

I have never before lived in a war-zone and I realize that the world I have described is not typical of one. But there is nothing around here that is typical. It’s a new kind of normal that I have never known. Welcome to the IZ.

To be perfectly clear, the Administration has truly bungled a great number of things. The war in Iraq is just one item in a long list that includes the Katrina response, the ongoing mess that is the Justice Department, the Myers nomination, social security reform, immigration, etc., etc. That said, the one thing they have gotten consistently right is their belief that the outcome in Iraq cannot be a withdrawal and surrender of the nation to extremists.

That was our approach to Somalia, and 15 years later it is still a disaster cranking out militant ideology. That was our approach to Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew and we paid the price in the form of the Taliban and its support for terrorism.

Whether there were terrorists in Iraq prior to our military action there, the fact is there are certainly terrorists there today. Handing them the country as we head out the door is not a viable option from a military standpoint or for the sake of the world my kids will inherit.

Despite my misgivings about much this Administration has done, I stand firmly in the belief that we must not surrender Iraq, we must not allow Congress to usurp the power of the Commander in Chief, and we must not set arbitrary deadlines for a withdrawal simply because “the people” don’t like the way things are going. “The people” look at the world as they see it today. We hire the President and Congress to move us toward a future world. For their jobs, they owe us more than retreat and defeat.

As a result, I am signing onto the petition created at WeWinTheyLose.com. If you would like to join as well, the petition and a simple form to complete are provided below for your use.

—————————————

Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, said adults in a vehicle with two children in the backseat were allowed through a Baghdad checkpoint on Sunday.

The adults then parked next to a market in the Adamiya area of Baghdad, abandoned the vehicle and detonated it with the children still inside, according to the general and another defense official.

“Children in the back seat, lower suspicion, we let it move through,” Barbero said. “They parked the vehicle, the adults run out and detonate it with the children in the back.”

“The brutality and ruthless nature of this enemy hasn’t changed,” Barbero said.

Absolutely unconscionable.

Take, for instance, Chris Bowers at MyDD. A recent post of his takes issue with the acts of the unhinged right.

Much like the democratic means attempted by conservatives to outlaw abortion, the media pressure against Edwards didn’t work. Unfortunately, the violent threats against Melissa did. Over at Pandagon, Amanda offers a taste of some of the tamer threats she received during the episode, and which it appears she continues to receive. Ultimately, it appears that it was the continuing threat of violence, not any media pressure or caving from the Edwards campaign, that allowed the right-wing to “take scalps” in this whole affair. (emphasis mine)

Well, if you look at McEwan’s post (which Bowers excerpts) what she said was:

There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation, but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with vitriol and veiled threats.

She received what she considered to be threats. That is, to be sure, absolutely inappropriate. The posts over at Pandagon are atrocious. The venom in them is atrocious.

The trouble is, with few exceptions, none of them, actually threatened violence. They said horrid violent things, and wished all manner of ills on Marcotte, but they weren’t specifically threatening. They wished harm on people simply because they disagreed with their lifestyle. Why does that sound so familiar? Oh wait!

They sounded like the comments of Kos himself. They sounded like the comments of the fringe left (#8 is my favorite example).

Even McEwan, at least, referred to them as veiled threats. Her post not only downplayed the nature of those threats, but also explained that those who had called for her expulsion from Camp Edwards were “tacitly” condoning those who had threatened her.

Well, frankly, that’s just stupid.

Does that mean that anyone who is pro-environment is tacitly endorsing the actions of groups like Earth First when they spike trees to break chain saws and cripple loggers? Hardly.

Does that mean that people who advocate for higher CAFE standards or electric cars are tacitly endorsing the actions of the Earth Liberation Front? Nope.

Bowers (and McEwan to a lesser extent) are guilty of exactly that of which they accuse Republicans – attempting to equate one very reasonable action to the irrational acts of a fringe element. In doing so, they seek to persuade others against the rational act.

For Catholics to oppose the continued employment of Marcotte and McEwan was a perfectly reasonable and legitimate act. Anyone who issued threats, or engaged in fringe behavior should be recognized as the fringe. Those actions are beyond the pale.

Bowers, on the other hand, uses McEwan’s post to engage in the worst possible form of misdirection. Threats against her are bad. Claiming that those threats represent some sort of sustained conscious campaign on behalf of the Republican Party is just ridiculous.

Terrorism and the threat of violence against American citizens remains a key political tool for the American right-wing. This is true both in the sense of conservatives and Republicans trying to scare people into voting for them / justifying their legislative agenda, and in the sense of actual terrorism and threats of violence against Democrats and progressives who stand in their way… physical violence and the threat of physical violence is still successfully being employed as a political tactic against individual progressives in America.

If you want to look at the use of terrorism as a political tool, fine. Do it honestly, however. Any discussion of such violence should recognize the role of the left in actual terrorism. The two examples cited above would be good places to start.

Earth First and the ELF have caused significant damages to businesses that are legally operating just as abortion clinics are. ELF was actually identified as the single greatest domestic terror threat until the attacks of 2001. Does Bowers renounce their actions? If so, why doesn’t he recognize the activity of the fringe left as well as the fringe right?

If he doesn’t reject their actions, and believes that the spiking of trees to prevent legal timber gathering, and the acts of arson and vandalism carried out by ELF are legitimate financial attacks (assuming they don’t hurt of kill anyone), then surely he believes abortion clinic bombings done after hours, when the clinics are empty, would be perfectly legitimate too. Right?

Unfortunately, he doesn’t spread his distaste of violence and threats of it around evenly. I suspect if you scan through the comments on MyDD, you’ll probably find more than a handful of veiled threats against the Bush Administration. Does he denounce all of his readers for the stupid comments of a few? If he did, maybe his claims about the fringe of the Republican Party would ring true, rather than hollow.

Why didn’t the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Laden’s involvement in terrorism? Because Clinton never took the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center sufficiently seriously. He never visited the site and his only public comment was to caution against “over-reaction.” In his pre-9/11 memoirs, George Stephanopoulos confirms that he and others on the staff saw it as a “failed bombing” and noted that it was far from topic A at the White House. Rather than the full-court press that the first terror attack on American soil deserved, Clinton let the investigation be handled by the FBI on location in New York without making it the national emergency it actually was.

The Washington Times and NY Post react with Condi and further info to discredit the claims Clinton made. (Does anyone care to wager the mainstream media will challenge his claims like this?)

On the NIE front, the Washington Post might as well have issued a special edition with wall-to-wall NIE coverage. E.J. Dionne uses it to bolster his argument that the protesters of today are no ‘hippie radicals’ and the GOP faces trouble in November.

That is why news over the weekend of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is especially troublesome for Republican electoral chances. By finding that the war in Iraq has encouraged global terrorism and spawned a new generation of Islamic radicals, the report by 16 government intelligence services undercuts the administration’s central argument that the Iraq war has made the United States safer.

Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman continue the WaPo NIE highlight reel and cover the Democrats use of the report in their electoral strategy.

Democratic lawmakers yesterday seized on elements of a new classified intelligence assessment as validation of their long-standing position that the Iraq war has been a distraction from the broader war against terrorists, seeing the new study as an opportunity to undermine President Bush’s determined offensive to turn terrorism to political advantage in the midterm elections.

What I find interesting about the Democrat tactic is the fact that they’re arguing the Iraq War is a distraction from terrorism, but ignoring the fact that our presence in Afghanistan – widely perceived to be legitimate by comparison – is also fueling the fire. We’re coming under increasing attack in Afghanistan, and that is an ‘approved’ front in the war on terror.

If the difference between the two is our internal comfort level, someone should let the insurgents know they need to lay off in Kabul because our presence has been self-justified.

The Wall Street Journal probably has the best solution. They suggest the government simply declassify the report – allowing for redaction or summary of sensitive information that would reveal sources or methods.

It’s impossible to know how true this report is, of course, since the NIE itself hasn’t been leaked. The reports are based on what sources claim the NIE says, but we don’t know who those sources are and what motivations they might have. Since their spin coincides rather conveniently with the argument made by Democratic critics of the war, and since this leak has also conveniently sprung in high campaign season, wise readers will be skeptical.

Releasing the NIE is probably the best idea. It’s not like most of what’s in the report would be news to anyone.

The whole debate on the NIE is actually a good case study in how to reduce a problem. The argument seems to be whether the bad guys like us less today than they did before we went into Iraq. They had killed 3,000 Americans in one morning before we went into the Middle East – claiming to still be offended by our efforts in Iraq circa 1991 and our continuing presence in Saudi Arabia – but all of that is lost.

The whole discussion has come down to a debate over “degrees of hate”. It’s kind of stupid if you think about it. Does it matter how much they hate us? If they were flying planes into buildings before they really, really hated us, doesn’t that tell us that we are even more justified in trying to eradicate the threat?

I think it does.

There is a dichotomy between two camps with differing views of America. One sees America as a country of and for itself, which was attacked without provocation by a hidden enemy. To respond to that requires firm resolve and an unshakable belief that what we’re doing is right, even if we’re doing it wrong.

The other side sees America as the progenitor of its attackers. Our foreign policy choices have bred anger in our attackers and we must address our own failings to stave off their assault. To them, the war in Iraq is yet another example of the failed foreign policy that has led to our current situation. To fight terrorism, they disconnect those who oppose and attack us in Iraq from those that oppose and attack us in New York.

Serious Americans recognize that there is a degree of truth to both arguments and our cause is not helped by both sides marginalizing the other’s beliefs. Our cause is also not helped by talking points that over-simplify the world.

The President, yesterday, broke out just such a talking point.

“Iraq is the central front in this war on terror,” he said. “If we leave the streets of Baghdad before the job is done we will have to face the terrorists in our own cities. We will stay the course. We will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed and victory in Iraq will be a major ideological triumph in the struggle of the 21st century. I firmly believe we’ll succeed.”

This is, to say the least, ridiculous. Does anyone believe the peaceful handover of Baghdad to the Iraqi people will end the worldwide scourge of terror? There was no war in Iraq when we were attacked in 2001. There was no war in Iraq when we were attacked in 1993. To claim that finishing the mission in Iraq will somehow guarantee we are not attacked stateside is a specious claim at best and laughably ignorant at worst.

A serious discussion needs to take place, but the nature of our Attention Deficit Media prevents that. Comments like these also do little to advance that agenda.