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Best estimates I have seen give this organization's strength among the Iraq insurgency at between five and seven percent. If you were to listen (and yeah, I did, rather closely) to the President's words last night, you'd think this was the only foe our troops had to face.
This is so bloody typical of the Administration's lying. No, it's not a flat-out falsehood and there's the usual built-in plausible deniability of deception; after all, there is this organization calling itself al-qaeda in Iraq (although only God knows why they actually call themselves this—CIA ops, anyone?) and they are involved.
But al-qaeda are NOT the 9.11 conspirators (despite what Ari Fleisher's TeeVee ads would have you believe), and what's more, there's little reason to believe they’d be welcome among the Iraqi insurgents themselves if not for our presence there.
I heard a lot of BS last night, but grotesquely over-inflating this small group's influence had to be the most disgusting, repulsive, and insulting rhetoric Bush deployed. To me, that ought to be the focus of our criticism, because if you can't even correctly identify the enemy, how on earth can you defend the mission?
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