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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
I believe that terrorists would have been more focused on US attacks if we would have not invaded Iraq.

You have long been an advocate for this notion that we are safer because the terrorists are all flocking to Iraq. Do you have any reason to think this is true? Spencer Ackerman says it's bunk:

The problem is the evidence doesn't seem to fit the contention that Iraq is "currently serving as a focal point for foreign jihadist fighters ... to build their extremist credentials." This after a few months when every explosion in Iraq was followed by administration spokesmen hollering "Zarqawi!" As John F. Burns reports from Baghdad,

• only a small number of the 12,000 detainees currently held at American-run camps across Iraq are foreigners from the swath of Muslim countries across Asia, the Middle East and Africa who have been the principal activists of Al Qaeda and its associated groups elsewhere. American officials have said that fewer than 150 of the detainees are foreigners, the rest Iraqis. The United States command has occasionally announced the arrest of a suspected Islamic terrorist, but has then fallen silent. On Tuesday, before the Falluja attacks, General [Mark] Kimmitt, the American military spokesman, appeared to back off at least somewhat from the emphasis on Islamic militants as the principal enemy. At a briefing, he offered an overview of the war in which he suggested that what has occurred, in effect, is a merging of the Saddamist insurgents and the Islamic terrorists into a common terrorist threat, and that, either way, "we just call them targets."

Now, it's surely imprecise to judge foreign infiltration by arrest numbers. But this means foreigners account for only 1.25 percent of suspected terrorists/insurgents/bad guys in custody in Iraq. Surely the terrorists can't be so stealthy as to escape coalition detentions in such overwhelming numbers. Even if you assume the Zarqawi memo to be a pinpoint accurate portrait of jihadi activity in Iraq, it explicitly bemoans how an Iraqi willing to make his home a nest of terrorist activity is "rarer than red sulphur," which has led to Zarqawi's confreres wearing "ourselves out on many occasions sheltering and protecting the brothers." Furthermore, Black's testimony terms the next generation of Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorists "no longer the seasoned veteran Al Qaeda trainers from Afghanistan's camps or close associates of Al Qaeda's founding members." If the new terrorists are greener, they're probably not so overwhelmingly wily as to consistently evade over 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Which suggests that the administration is confusing where the terrorists are for where it would like them to be.

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