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.

This is frustrating as hell. Again, the bizarre notion that if we had stayed out of Iraq, and concentrated on Afghanistan, that the radical Muslims of the world would NOT have been "outraged" by that.

Not ONE person has explained why this would be the case, and this is not the only venue where I have brought this up.

- Saddam, as I am ENDLESSLY told by the liberals, was supposedly the enemy of bin Laden, that Iraq was supposedly a secular nation that al Qaeda firmly opposed, and that no sympathy or alliance would ever have been possible.

- Afghanistan was the home base of al Qaeda, and run by a government totally sympathetic with its goals. The U.S. threw al Qaeda and the Taliban out of the country, killing many and destroying training bases and other facilites. War between al Qaeda and the U.S. was fully engaged long before we got into Afghanistan.

Yet the invasion of Iraq is what pissed all these normally harmless people off. Right.

Did you think Zarqawi was going to become a goddam farmer if we'd only invaded Iraq?

Either those holding this "only Iraq creating new terrorists" view make a case that we should not have invaded ANY Muslim country, or drop this particular myth.

IMO, the main reason the terrorists are funneling into Iraq is primarily because the supply lines and support out of Syria are more effective.