JB

In his Sunday speech to the nation, President Bush once again artfully attempted to suggest a connection between deposing Saddam Hussein and the war on terror that began with the September 11th attacks:

And for America, there will be no going back to the era before September the 11th, 2001, to false comfort in a dangerous world. We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.

This is cleverly done, but in fact, there is still no evidence that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. Nor does there seem to be any evidence that the Administration's policy in Iraq has made Americans safer at home, or successfully deterred future attacks on American soil. Indeed, the evidence points to the opposite conclusion. By attacking Iraq, we diverted resources from Afghanistan, which has fallen into increasing political chaos, and from needed expenditures on homeland security. As a result of our attack, terrorist groups and Islamic fundamentalists who have no love for the U.S. have been pouring into Iraq to assist with the guerilla war now being conducted against our troops. That war, and the cost of rebuilding the country, have sapped American resources even more. And, as I have repeatedly suggested in this blog, there is also the very unsettling possibility that if weapons of mass destruction, or materials used to construct them, did exist before the war (a prospect that seems increasingly less likely, see the post below), were spirited out of the country as a result of the chaos produced by our attack on Iraq, and are now in the hands of terrorist groups.

Our show of strength, as the President puts it, has had exactly the opposite effect that the President claims it would have. Instead it seems that President Bush is the one offering the nation "false comfort" when he suggests that his Iraq policy and his refusal to fund homeland security at proper levels has made Americans safer.