James Fallows: If toppling Saddam was essential to "war on terror," why wasn't toppling bin Laden? [View All]

:wtf:

James Fallows expresses his bewilderment over the idiocy of a Giuliani debate response:

http://jamesfallows.com/test/2007/06/06/what-is-rudy-guiliani-talking-about/

Rudy Giuliani’s answer to the first substantive question of the debate: Knowing everything we know now, good idea or bad idea to have invaded Iraq?



Huh????

You can understand why President Bush has to argue this case. To do otherwise would be to concede that his foreign policy has been a failure not just of execution but of fundamental concept.

You can understand why a lot of people argue that now, largely because of the disastrous U.S. occupation, Iraq has indeed become a center of world terrorist organization against the United States – and that this fact makes all the worse America’s bad-enough-to-begin-with predicament in figuring out when and how it can leave. (My view remains: It’s only getting worse the longer we stay, so while it would be terrible to start leaving now, it will be more terrible the longer we wait.)

You can understand how tempting it would be for the Democrats to change just a little part of this statement: “It’s unthinkable that you would leave Osama bin Laden in charge of al Qaeda and be able to fight the war on terror.” Which would kick off a discussion of all the ways in which the switch to Iraq let bin Laden and his cronies wriggle away....