Al Qaeda, not the US, distracted/"stretched thin" by Iraq

Disproving a myth is always easier.

Let's quickly disprove the myth (promoted extensively by Howard Dean and now by John Kerry and Ted Kennedy) that the US is distracted by the War in Iraq—that we are "WORSE OFF", the claim, because we did not apply the same military and monetary resources to the pursuit of Al Qaeda that we did to removing Saddam. (I first challenged this here and here).

First, Al Qaeda and its assorted mutants could be found in more than 60 countries. Do Bush critics expect the US to invade or bomb every nation that has "Al Qaeda"? ("Why not?", will argue the same folks who also complain about the forces being stretched thin.)

Of course not. You partner with these nations, deploy special ops, and help fund and train their security and intelligence folks to weed out terrorists.

(Partnering, obviously, was not an option with hostile, terror-sponsoring regimes in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Syria).

Critics love to portray the President as an isolationist but they likely have no clue how many nations the U.S. has partnered with in its pursuit of Islamists.
Here's a brief list of those that have committed both men and billions of their own dollars to the fight (this is not a listing of countries that have joined the Iraq coalition)--: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, Japan, Greece, Canada, Belgium, India, Pakistan, Kazhakstan, New Zealand, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Australia, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, UAE, Romania, Poland, Georgia, Uzbekistan,

(Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan are now partners in the War on Terror, and perhaps
Libya soon.

These countries understand the danger Islamists pose and are thus actively weeding them out using their own resources.

Once Bush stigmatized all manners of terrorism and said "with us or against us" terrorist-belt countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan began the adoption of unprecedented social, political and economic reforms--from elections to rolling up madrassas.

Yet, folks like Kennedy and Kerry continue to depict the President as a
Divider. But it is they who trickily attempt to separate Iraq from the War on Terror. Iraq is front and central to the War on Terror, which cannot be won without eliminating state sponsors of terror.

Look at Israel—Iran and Syria breed more terrorists than Israel could ever eliminate.

Saddam “secular” Hussein was sponsoring Islamist terrorists against Israel—he gave them a cool $25 million between 2001 and 2003--money that could have--and probably already has--trickled to Al Qaeda or other Islamists.

Saddam's unaccounted for billions could be funding terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere even as we speak.

The brilliance of the Iraq strategy: by opening up a new front in Iraq, the
US is drawing Al Qaeda and Islamist militants from all over to confront highly trained US forces inside Iraq. These are terrorists that are fleeing their former host nations both because of the crackdown against them and because they relish the opportunity to jihad against Americans in Iraq.

This is GOOD--we want them to go to Iraq and fight soldiers instead of coming here and terrorizing civilians. If Qaeda had enough recruits, it would have done both, but the fact that we haven't had a terrorist attack since 9/11 proves that it is the enemy that is stretched thin.

Having said this, I fully support more troops for Iraq; we need to send as many as needed to combat all the terrorist bees that are flocking to the American honey.

So in summary--we have a relentless global war against Al Qaeda and affiliates; bin Laden who once had an entire country to manufacture terrorists and who aspired to procure WMD now stretched thin and reduced to hiding in a hole somewhere--doesn't even have a video camera, apparently; Iraq and Afghanistan liberated and marching towards democracy and setting an example for the rest of the Middle East; Libya renouncing terror and WMD; Muslim nations cracking down on Islamists--what more can Bush critics whine about?

American military casualties?

9/11/01 claimed more victims than US military losses worldwide since
1980. How's that for perspective?