It's not so much bad form to clone a thread as merely unnecessary. I wrote the software that runs the board so that any activity on a thread, no matter how old, moves it up the list; active threads can't disappear off the front page and your reply can't be buried. Also, the message form has a box for your email address and a checkbox that says "send email notification of responses" that, when used--as I usually do--makes the server send me email that you've replied to my message. There's really no risk that I won't notice that you've replied.
Your arguments are stronger this time. Still based on assumptions, but you've backed them up with information that gives them more context than thin air.
The countries-of-origin all have a high level of both domestic terror activity as well as camps and support for international terrorists. More suggestive of a link, though still not proven. Similar thing with the location at which this group was captured. You seem to be assuming that they'd just entered the country and thus the nearest neighbor indicated their point of entry. Maybe, logical; we'll know more after they're interrogated. The cash they had may indicate they just entered the country; or it may have been acquired from some local cache; or from local guerillas, Baathist or otherwise. I'm sure that the Baathist remnants acquired lots of resources, both cash and weapons, during the fall of their regime that they're using in their guerilla war. The fact that the Iraqi forces just "melted away" means that they must have megatons of unused ammo and weapons.
Moving up to Afghanistan...there's been more than one report that bin Laden has been sheltering for some time in a remote mountain range in that area. It has the ring of truth because it fits his past behavior; he was usually reported in some mountain hideaway or other in Afghanistan during the war. I can believe that his lieutenants might seek shelter in cities in Iran, but I wonder if ObL himself might consider that too risky. His face is well-known, as is the reward for his capture. If he stays in a remote mountain area, he can be protected by hundreds of fanatics guarding the approaches through nearly impassable terrain, terrain that he knows well and attacking American forces wouldn't. Hey, I don't have any proof either, just logical arguments for that belief.
As for Al Qaeda rank-and-file, I can only continue to cite the many reports that there are an estimated 1,000 of them still operating in the "AfPak" area; and I haven't come across any reports to dispute that.
"Flypaper"...cute term, but I have to discount any such assertion made after the war. It's the sort of thing that Bush could have said before the war with as much impunity as he says it now. Revealing that uncharacteristically cunning strategy ahead of time wouldn't change a thing, for all the reasons you give. It's unquestionably just one more desperate shot in the barrage of rationalizations being thrown out there in the desperate hope that one will stick.
When two or more pundits of the same persuasion use identical words, I don't take it as validating the position at all; rather, it heightens my suspicion that their words are being orchestrated or, at a minimum, that they're simply propogating the same meme in the usual punditry circle-jerk.
Yes, they are sending cannon fodder, and we'll scoop them up by the bushelful. The loss of so much cannon fodder will be demoralizing after a time. Cannon fodder have families. The cannon fodder have friends. They will go on jihad to Iraq - and never be heard from again.
The Middle East has an endless supply of cannon fodder. The bitter and angry and fanatic have been answering the call for decades with no sign of discouragement by their slaughter; why should Iraq be any different? Suicide bombers die, by definition, and are never heard from again; their replacements are their families and friends, and line up eagerly to sit on the right hand of Allah. The organized forces of terror may well be counting on us slaughtering martyrs by the thousands, so that eventually we'll be perceived as being as single-mindedly bloodthirsty toward Muslims as they portray the Israelis. We can slaughter the cannon fodder, but can we really win that way?
It hasn't worked for Israel.