Considering the immense amount of grief I get when speculating on how things "might have been" under alternative approaches, do you have the slightest amount of objective evidence to indicate that any Islamists anywhere in the world have gone to war against us because of Iraq that would have stayed home and tended goats if we had only overrun Afghanistan? Have any Islamist terrorists come out and explained anywhere at all how they were okay with the attack on the Taliban and al Qaeda, but somehow the ousting of Saddam was the last straw?

Or do you have the slightest amount of evidence that somehow, if we had "concentrated" on Afghanistan,* that somehow bin Laden would have been caught? Especially since he probably ducked into Pakistan early in the game?

Why are these imaginary premises any more acceptable than the ones I come up with? And in fact, my speculations hold up a lot better under application of common sense than these do.

In fact, the odds are quite good that whatever part of the forces opposing us in Iraq that consist of radical Islamists, including Zarqawi and the rest of the heirs of al Qaeda, would be currently opposing us in Afghanstan if Saddam were still in power.

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*A term that seems a bit fuzzy. While I hear how a lot about how "more troops" could solve all our problems, details seem lacking on what the troops would be doing, how much collateral damage a full-out assault would create as opposed to targeted attacks, or what the effect on American casualty levels would be.