Bush Explores Simple Math: Al Qaeda, Iraq, Al Qaeda in Iraq

POSTED BY , 25 July 2007

Sometimes, Bush is so smart I'm convinced that feeling of hyper-anxious butterflies in my stomach is not, in fact, well-earned trepidation, but rather some manifestation of absolute awe for the man's heretofore unwitnessed acumen.  When genius is in front of you, you can only listen, right?

That's just what they were doing in South Carolina Tuesday. With his most sparkling brilliance yet, Bush explained ever so eloquently to a crowd in Charleston that the critics are wrong, the tie between Al Qaeda and Iraq is as solid as those WMD's.  But he did so with such verbal prowess my high school debate teacher must be standing up in applause:

"Al Qaeda in Iraq is a group founded by foreign terrorists, led largely by foreign terrorists, and loyal to a foreign terrorist leader - Osama bin Laden.  They know they're al Qaeda.  The Iraqi people know they are al Qaeda.  People across the Muslim world know they're al Qaeda.  And there's a good reason they're called al Qaeda in Iraq: They are al Qaeda ... in ... Iraq."  [Ellipses not mine; those are actually printed in the formal speech from the White House.]

Well, that clears up a lot of confusion.  I wonder if he can explain to me now why it's called Kentucky Fried Chicken?  Oh well, I guess we can save those tough questions for later, because it seems the media is still pretty up in arms about this.

And for good reason.  While it is election season and We The People tend to tolerate more vitriol and mindless drivel now than usual, it by no means gives the Commander in Chief the mandate to take us back to remedial education with him.  I actually finished kindergarten, and if you lined up Bush with our last three presidents, I could very easily point and tell you which one of these things is not like the other, one of these things doesn't belong.

But should I forget, he's here to remind us.  And this moment of presidential genius falls on the heels of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, which came out last week and named al Qaeda "the most serious threat" to the U.S. homeland, adding that al Qaeda in Iraq was the group's "most visible and capable affiliate."  (Perhaps we should make sure that in the next issue of Presidency for Dummies, we explain the difference between "affiliate" and "one and the same.")

John Kerry must have been thinking the same thing.  Calling the Al Qaeda - Iraq connection "a phony argument," he told the LAT that "the principal threat" in Iraq is not al Qaeda but a civil war that pits Sunni against Shiite and an Iraqi government that is not joining the fight.

Still others say the problem isn't even Iraq. On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) said, "Iraq is not the central front in the war on terror.  As the National Intelligence Estimate indicates, it's Pakistan and Afghanistan.  We've got to finish the job in Afghanistan.  We were attacked from there.  And Pakistan is where the al Qaeda leadership is reconstituting itself today."

But the administration won't be quick to fight Pakistan, who they deem a key ally in the area.  Instead, they've employed one of their most favored tactics to combat the wave of criticism on the homefront: another surge, reports the NYT.


What?  I thought that was what the President's supposed to do.

For full effect, listen to the speech on NPR or watch the video on CNN.  As soon as we see it on YouTube, we'll repost it here.

- Raleigh-Elizabeth Smith