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today's terrorist

I don't understand how the US can release reasonable, informed reports that say

Today, the principal terrorist enemy confronting the United States is a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks, and individuals – and their state and non-state supporters – which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends.

This transnational movement is not monolithic. Although al-Qaida functions as the movement’s vanguard and remains, along with its affiliate groups and those inspired by them, the most dangerous present manifestation of the enemy, the movement is not controlled by any single individual, group, or state. What unites the movement is a common vision, a common set of ideas about the nature and destiny of the world, and a common goal of ushering in totalitarian rule. What unites the movement is the ideology of oppression, violence, and hate.

Our terrorist enemies exploit Islam to serve a violent political vision.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nsct/2006/sectionIII.html

and yet still carry out policies that don't deal with these actual problems.
Let's put these together shall we:

1. There is a small but extremely dangerous decentralized, worldwide network of terrorists, enabled by the Internet
2. Let's devote all our efforts to attacking Iraq

How can you clearly state #1, as they have done, and not then go on to conclude that invading Iraq was and continues to be a fatal distraction from dealing with the actual enemy.

An actual enemy which you deal with through the same tried-and-true on-the-ground, legal, intelligence gathering techniques that have worked for decades. No hundreds of billions of dollars, no tens of thousands of dead Iraqs, just very smart men and women, all over the world, working hard to understand and stop criminals.

Ok, that's it. Enough ranting for today. posted by Richard at 16:52 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)