A little over a year ago, I wrote about the failure of the flypaper theory, put forth by Andrew Sullivan and parroted by the administration. What we are doing in Iraq, dear readers, is running the world's foremost terrorist training camp. Lo and behold, a National Intelligence Committee report was just released saying the <b>exact same thing</b> (download the 6.69MB pdf file here to read it for yourself).

If I were an easily amazed sort, I would be struck at the remarkable coincidence between what I've been saying about Iraq and what the analysts say in the report. But the truth is that anyone who has studied Iraq and Afghanistan (like I did in university) could tell you that even in the best case scenario, we've created a whole new generation of mujahideen. Except now, they're much better organized and will be able to go straight from the battlefields of Falluja to the Al-Qaeda cells of the West. Remember–"Qaeda" means "list;" it began as a list of mujahideen who passed through Bin Laden's safehouse in Pakistan on the way to the Afghan front. It took him years to get Al-Qaeda going; now all that infrastructure is already in place. Oh, also, Iraq has a large, native population of educated, middle-class aspirants who seem to dominate the Al-Qaeda's ranks.

As I heard an American soldier say on TV a while ago, Iraq is not going to stabilize until we're gone. Unfortunately, when we leave, the shit is really going to hit the fan. "Why didn't anybody say anything about this before?" I hear you cry. Well, let's face it, folks–even the world's largest coordinated anti-war demonstrations weren't able to stop the military-industrial juggernaut from embarking on this amazingly ill-advised adventure. The problem with Iraq certainly wasn't getting in–it's getting out.

This brings us to another point from the report (which, if I was paranoid, I could have sworn they stole from my notebooks) which is that the unipolar powerstructure we have today where the US is the only superpower and therefore supercop, is unsustainable.

Sidebar–I've been trying to write a book about exactly what this report says in pretty much the same way they say it. I started writing it in 2002, which shows you what a tremendous slouch I am. The report is about a hundred and twenty pages long, while the book I've been (hardly) working on should have been about 200. I wonder if this report will help or hinder my pitch.

Back to Iraq: when I say our foreign policy is myopic, the ease of getting in versus getting out is exactly what I'm talking about. Americans have supreme (and I think, uunfounded) faith in the military to fix things. Unfortunately, there are many things that are not fixable by armies, especially not the U.S. army. Our perceived helplessness in the face of the 9/11 attacks had to be balanced by the assertion that our army can still go kick some ass somewhere out there, wherever we send them, so there, foreigners!

The obvious problem with this approach is that you can't build a new democracy based solely on ass-kicking. OK, I take it back, you can, but you'll end up with what I call the American embassy state, a perfect example of which is "liberated Afghanistan." The U.S. Army has control of Kabul and wherever they're hanging out in the Hindu Kush looking for terrorists, but they can't patrol the whole country. The majority of Afghanistan is back in the hands of feudal warlords, the only people who can, in fact, build a state founded on ass-kicking alone.

In addition to our foreign policy myopia, I think what's really hampering America's understanding of the consequences of our actions is an unwillingness to understand the nitty-gritty of a military invasion. "Send the Marines" and call it a day, that's how we used to work. Some shit goes down, we send our boys over thee to do whatever it is they do, and then they come home, right? Wrong. Americans don't want to see how the sausage is made. Fox News won't even cover American casualties (although, to be fair, they only support our <i>living</i> troops, and anyone who does differently is a pinko traitor).

And what did our buddies over at the White House say about the report?
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Q There's a report out that Iraq could become an important breeding ground for terrorism. Is the President concerned about that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think the report talks a lot more — about a lot more than that. We welcome the report. I think the report confirms that our strategy of staying on the offensive and spreading freedom to win the war on terrorism is the right approach. We are in a struggle of epic proportions and the stakes are high, and the President believes it's important to continue to advance freedom in a dangerous region of the world because it will make the world a more peaceful place, and make America more secure. And so I think that's the — this report is a speculative report about things that could happen in the world, but we welcome the report and —

Q To what extent is he concerned that Iraq has become, or is becoming a breeding ground for terrorism —

MR. McCLELLAN: I think we talked about this before — the terrorists recognize how high the stakes are. We're fighting them abroad so that we don't have to fight them here at home. And the way to win the war on terrorism is to stay on the offensive and work with the international community to bring to justice those who seek to do us harm, and to work together to advance freedom, particularly in the broader Middle East region. And that's how we ultimately defeat the ideology of hatred that terrorists espouse.

Q But has the war — did the war create a vacuum that has made it more conducive for terrorists to use Iraq as a base?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President talked about that during the campaign. I mean, that's just a misunderstanding of the war on terrorism.

Q — the President to talk about this, as a central front of the war on terrorism, when essentially, what the report is suggesting is that it is a central front created by and essentially helping terrorism.

MR. McCLELLAN: Did the report say that?

Q — insinuating that it's a place where it's a breeding ground for —

MR. McCLELLAN: I think the report, like I said, confirms that we have the right strategy for winning the war on terrorism, which is to stay on the offensive and go after the terrorists, and to work to spread freedom and hope to regions of the world that have only known tyranny and oppression. And the war on terrorism is won by staying on the offensive and spreading freedom.
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I stopped the transcript here, because if McClellan had said "spreading freedom" or "staying on the offensive" one more time, it would have to become true. Whoops! In fact, the report suggests that "staying on the offensive" and the invasion of Iraq in order to "spread freedom" were NOT THE WAY TO WIN THE WAR ON TERROR.

Now, on to the mea culpa section of D.J.'s Iraq meme review. Before the war started, I warned that any extant weapons of mass desctruction in Iraq would either be used against the invading troops or spirited out of the country. It seems the Duelfer commission disagrees, having found no evidence to suggest that Saddam had WMDs at the time of the invasion, or that these (non-existant, I suppose) weapons were exported. Unbelievably, the article quotes Donald Rumsfeld as saying that "it's possible that WMD did exist, but was transferred, in whole or in part, to one or more other countries. We see that theory put forward."

WHAT?!? Then why the fuck did you go into Iraq in the first place? To speed up the propagation of WMDs? Retards.