PRESIDENTIAL DISCONNECT (LAT)

[Carla in Ca]

The LAT has come back to it's senses the last few weeks, this great editorial included.
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-bush29jun29,0,5125939.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials>


President Bush's pep talk to the nation Tuesday night was a major disappointment. He again rewrote history by lumping together the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the need for war in Iraq, when, in fact, Saddam Hussein's Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda. Bush spoke of "difficult and dangerous" work in Iraq that produces "images of violence and bloodshed," but he glossed over the reality of how bad the situation is. He offered no benchmarks to measure the war's progress, falling back on exhortations to "complete the mission" with a goal of withdrawing troops "as soon as possible."

(snip)


Bush might be right to now put Iraq at the center of the "global war on terror," but it didn't have that status before the invasion. Al Qaeda flocked to Baghdad after the invasion and used Iraq as a rallying point for Muslims outraged by the U.S. invasion of an Arab nation.

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