If We Leave, They WON'T Come

by Steve

The refrain from Bush and Cheney, as well as all GOPers is that we must stay in Iraq to stop the hordes from following us back home and killing us. As we have said before, there is zero chance that the Mahdi Army or Badr Corps will cross the Atlantic to stir up death and misery in Los Angeles, just as there is zero chance that Sunni insurgents will pass on their sectarian strife to do the same. So that leaves Al Qaeda in Iraq, an entity that Bush’s surge seems to have forgotten. But will they or any group in Iraq land in downtown Manhattan or Peoria if we leave Iraq?

Nope.

It’s become President Bush’s mantra, his main explanation for why he won’t withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq anytime soon.

In speech after speech, in statement after statement, Bush insists that “this is a war in which, if we were to leave before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here.”

The line, which Bush repeated Wednesday in a speech to troops at California's Fort Irwin, suggests a chilling picture of warfare on American streets.

But is it true?

Military and diplomatic analysts say it isn't. They accuse Bush of exaggerating the threat that enemy forces in Iraq pose to the U.S. mainland.

“The president is using a primitive, inarticulate argument that leaves him open to criticism and caricature,” said James Jay Carafano, a homeland security and counterterrorism expert for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization. “It’s a poor choice of words that doesn’t convey the essence of the problem - that walking away from a problem doesn’t solve anything.”

I hate it when liberal outfits like the Heritage Foundation cloud Dear Leader's message.

U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic experts in Bush's own government say the violence in Iraq is primarily a struggle for power between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis seeking to dominate their society, not a crusade by radical Sunni jihadists bent on carrying the battle to the United States.

[snip]

While acknowledging that terrorists could commit a catastrophic act on U.S. soil at any time - whether U.S. forces are in Iraq or not - the likelihood that enemy combatants from Iraq might follow departing U.S. forces back to the United States is remote at best, experts say.

[snip]

"The war in Iraq isn't preventing terrorist attacks on America," said one U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he's contradicting the president and other top officials. "If anything, that - along with the way we've been treating terrorist suspects - may be inspiring more Muslims to think of us as the enemy."

Huh? Someone inside is saying Bush and Cheney are full of sh*t?