http://stevensonblog.tuscaloosanews.com/default.asp?item=651350

Thinking World War III Blues

TUSCALOOSA President George W. Bush's foot stomping this week about how the escalation must go forward, despite a less than encouraging report on his own benchmarks in Iraq, has probably bought him a couple of months of breathing room.
That is, until Gen. George Petraeus, who replaced Gen. George Casey in January after Casey opposed Bush's "surge" (so much for "listening the generals," huh?), presents his formal report on progress in Iraq. One can only imagine the pressure that is being brought to bear on Petraeus to report everything is coming up roses.
With Bush, his administration and most of the Republican presidential candidates, it is 9/11 all day, every day and we are to be very, very afraid.
But I keep thinking back to 9/12, when we had the whole world on our side and full support for invading Afghanistan and clearing out the Taliban, which was sheltering Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. By all reports we came very close in the mountains of Tora Bora to effectively wiping out al Qaeda and capturing or killing bin Laden, which would effectively have given us a tremendous advantage in the emerging "war on terror."
But instead, we turned away from Afghanistan, bin Laden and world opinion by invading Iraq on trumped up charges that the nation was armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction (be afraid, be very afraid again).
From there is has been pretty much all downhill. Al Qaeda has now found a new safe haven in the lawless territories on the Pakistan-Afghan border and our homeland security poobah now says his "gut" tells him that we will soon be attacked again.
But this time I don't think we will see the rest of the world rally behind us.
Oh to go back to Sept. 12, 2001 and start all over again.
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Posted July 14, 2007 1:08:12 AM

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