In the wake of the Democratic debate, President Bush yesterday made a speech in the same town (Charleston, South Carolina) wherein he insisted that we must keep fighting in Iraq because we are now fighting “Al Qaeda in Iraq.” These people we are fighting, he says, not without satisfaction, are the same as the people who attacked us on September 11.

He spoke for 29 minutes. He used the term “Al Qaeda” 93 times. That’s more than 3 times a minute. More than once every 20 seconds. OK George, we get the point.

The idea is, if we (the American public) think we are fighting the bad guys in Iraq, maybe we’ll have more stomach for the President's war. Of course, when we invaded Iraq four years ago, presumably THAT was to fight the bad guys who attacked us on 9/11. Wasn’t it?

So we can forgive the president his smug sense of self-satisfaction. It took four years, but by God, Al Qaeda has finally showed up in Iraq! He wasn’t wrong in 2003. He wasn’t misinformed. He wasn’t a victim of faulty intelligence. No- he was prescient!

What makes us civilians out here pull our hair out is the fact that Al Qaeda is in Iraq BECAUSE we invaded. I may have said this before, but if, international military presence-wise, we are a bucket of manure, Al Qaeda are a bunch of flies. And you know how that works.

So President Bush justifies our continued military presence in Iraq thusly: “We must stay in Iraq until we defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq!” Whereas Al Qaeda will be in Iraq fighting us, not because they have some grand design on Iraq, not because it is a “safe haven for terrorists” (that would be our good friends Pakistan). No, it is because if you are in Al Qaeda, or if you have any aspiration or inclination to join Al Qaeda, there is nothing you’d rather do than shoot at American soldiers occupying Arab land.

Bush’s war is the root cause of the thing he is waging war to eradicate. So of course, it is easy to understand the wisdom of digging in and staying the course.