Richard Clarke on Iraq

Richard Clarke puts it out there pretty clearly in a Daily News op-ed on Iraq. He tackles the "fly paper" meme and pretty much eviscerates it. He very clearly shows how the Bush administration claims are both illogical and politically motivated. You need to read it as I can't summarize it so as to improve on anything he has to say in his deconstruction of the absurdity of it all. Here are a few excerpts:

Does the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will "follow us home" like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we "lose" in Iraq.

The puppy dog theory is the corollary to earlier sloganeering that proved the President had never studied logic: "We are fighting terrorists in Iraq so that we will not have to face them and fight them in the streets of our own cities." . . .

How is this odd terrorist puppy dog behavior supposed to work? The President must believe that terrorists are playing by some odd rules of chivalry. Would this be the "only one slaughter ground at a time" rule of terrorism?

Of course, nothing about our being "over there" in any way prevents terrorists from coming here. Quite the opposite, the evidence is overwhelming that our presence provides motivation for people throughout the Arab world to become anti-American terrorists.

While we are manufacturing terrorists in Iraq by the carload we are ignoring the needed resources at home to actually do something about improving our security.

In the real world, by choosing unnecessarily to go into Iraq, Bush not only diverted efforts from delivering a death blow to Al Qaeda, he gave that movement both a second chance and the best recruiting tool possible.

How many of the increasingly fewer Bush supporters need to read and understand this before they get the picture?

h/t AmericaBlog