ONE WAR, TWO FRONTS

As the election approaches, the Bush campaign argues that the war in Iraq is conceptually a part of the GWOT, the global War on Terror.

That is not as Dana Milbank writes in this morning's Post, the same as arguing that Saddam was behind 9/11.

But Dana, a man who just can't let go, has to sneak this into this morning's article:

The commission investigating the attacks found that there were contacts but no collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Yeah, fine, whatever.

The more important argument is that once Iraq began to sink in the polls it was wrapped in the conceptual mantle of the far more popular War on Terror, and that this was done as a tactical political move.

This week's Washington Post-ABC News poll shows why. A majority of Americans disapprove of President Bush's handling of the economy, but 60 percent of the country continues to give him high marks in the struggle against terrorism. By 56 percent to 38 percent, Americans trust Bush more than Kerry to fight terrorism -- Bush's strongest issue in the poll.

Even given the political imperative, the convention's focus on terrorism -- and the charge that Kerry is ill-equipped to combat it -- has been intense. The party has gone through three hours of prime-time speeches with barely a mention of the economy, passing reference to domestic policies, and no specific discussion of Bush's agenda for a second term. While the Post poll found public discontent with Bush's handling of Iraq, convention speakers have discussed Iraq as a part of the more popular "war on terrorism."

The assumption has been made by political writers that this conceptual linkage by the administration has been a tactical one ever since Iraq began to poll poorly, but as a matter of pure historical fact that is simply false.

You may disagree with the conceptual linking of the two -- certainly it is subject to debate -- but in point of fact it has been made from the very beginning, at a time when the war in Iraq was polling extraordinarily well.

Comments

[Bryon Gill]

Actually it would be more fair to say that they retreated to that position after it was made clear that even Bush didn't believe Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks. If there weren't confusion about whether we occupied the country that actually attacked us there would be very little question.

It's kind of like Cheney's "sensitive" quip, saying he thinks we can win the GWOT by showing our "softer side". Bush has said we need to have a sensitive war on terror on a number of occassions, some quite recent, but the remark sticks to Kerry but not Bush because everyone knows that the Bush administration is openly hostile to gays. (How else to explain the fact that Keyes openly calls Mary Cheney a 'selfish hedonist' and refuses to back down from the remark, and Cheney is too embarassed to bring Mary and her partner on stage?)

[IceCold]

What "retreat"? Iraq was and is obviously an operation sparked entirely by the concern over terrorism, specifically the fear that global terror of the kind represented by 9/11 would marry up with unconventional weapons. Ditto for Iran and North Korea (I seem to recall something about an "axis" in a speech preceding the war). Prior to 9/11, Iraq was still a festering back-burner item, which had generated only the rather pathetic "smart sanctions" idea out of State.

Memo to Milbank (yes, a waste of time, but you just can't ignore someone in such need): the most dangerous, reckless, unpredictable and WMD-capable regime on Earth (Iraq under Saddam) will now NEVER have any more than contacts with al-Qaeda. Uh, it's called "pre-emption," remember? The "pre" part means you react to well-founded concerns about future developments, NOT robotically, after the fact, when you've already suffered a grievous blow. It's a much larger topic, but the idea that the 9/11 commission is even a significant, much less authoritative, source for the issue of AQ's connection to Iraq or any other state is absurd.

[dauber]

I can't even believe you think this is somehow connected to the question of gays. That's so out of left field (pardon the pun) that I honestly don't know how to answer you on this one. Go ahead, believe it. I'll never talk you out of it.