Bush, Talabani Strike Back

Just when Democrats start mounting an offensive based on what they'd like the NIE to confirm, President Bush and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani strike back at Democrats' assertions. Here's how President Bush hit back:

But at the White House, the president called critics who say the Iraq war was a mistake "naive." "I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe," he said. He also took issue with the conclusion that the Iraq war is responsible for creating new terrorists, saying that those who "see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement" if not for the Iraq war are ignoring 20 years of history.

"We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September 11. We weren't in Iraq when thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps," Mr. Bush said. "We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."

This fits nicely with Dr. Rice's statement:

"Now that we're fighting back, of course they are fighting back, too. I find it just extraordinary that the argument is, all right, so they're using the fact they're being challenged in the Middle East and challenged in Iraq to recruit, therefore you've made the war on terrorism worse. It's as if we were in a good place on Sept. 11. Clearly, we weren't."

Logically speaking, Democrats' assertions that we're worse off now in fighting terrorists must be based on the assumption that Iraq and Afghnanistan were islands of tranquility. 9/11 tore down that illusion and have forced us to see things clearly for the first time in 30 years. As students of the international jihadist movement will tell you, jihadists declared war on the US in 1979. It just took 9/11 to bring us to the sober conclusion that they were a threat we could no longer ignore.

Here's how President Talabani responded:

"The American presence has always prevented any kind of foreign invasion to Iraq," Talabani said. "That's one of the main reasons why we think that we need an American presence, even symbolical, in the country to prevent our neighbors attacking us," he said at a forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think thank.

I'd defy Democrats to say that they won't take Talabani's words to heart, especially since he isn't begging for thousands of troops to stay there indefinitely. He's merely saying that having an American presence, even a symbolic one, gives the bad guys pause. I don't think we can tell a steadfast ally that we won't work with them in securing their country. That's hardly the right signal to send to the region.

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Posted Wednesday, September 27, 2006 3:57 PM

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