DISARRAY IN WINGNUT WORLD!

Dr. Rusty Shackleford of My Pet Jawa writes:

Given 20/20 hindsight, I've slowly come around the to argument that invading Iraq was a mistake. We shouldn't have invaded Iraq. That decision did not enhance our national security.

I don't want to dishearten someone who's on the way to recovery but it does seem RS has a LOT further to go:

If our national security is our paramount concern, then disengaging from Iraq would be disastrous.

RS quotes another war whore, Ralph Peters of the NY Post:

If we nonetheless quit Iraq in 2009, the defeated remnants of al Qaeda will be able to declare victory, after all. The organization will be able to re-launch itself as the great Muslim victor over the Great Satan. We'll have thrown away a potentially decisive triumph and revived the fortunes of the fanatics who brought us 9/11.

I'd like to know how they can reconcile these claims of disaster if we withdraw with their claims that we are winning but that's another issue. Here I am concerned with RS's delusion about who the real enemy is:

Al Qaeda and their Salafi allies have always only had one demand in Iraq: that we leave.

RS still doesn't get that most of the Iraqis - Sunni, Shia and Kurds - blame us for the violence and want us GONE.

Bluto on Jawa disagrees with RS about the war and offers a novel (to me) defense of the Fiasco in Iraq:

Iraq opened a vital second front that prevented jihadis from across the region from massing against Coalition troops in Afghanistan. It required them to divide their resources.

In WingnutWorld, taking your eye off the ball is known as "opening a second front." Bluto adds other BS post-hoc reasons to justify the war, such as Saddam being a really bad guy, BUT THAT WASN'T THE POINT, AS SECRETARY RICE JUST AFFIRMED.

In a post-script, Bluto linked to a see-dubya post at Malkin's site that appeared to support the claim that the Iraq Fiasco has strengthened the U.S. I went to the original article and found otherwise:

First, Green states and acknowledges the negatives. He writes: "The Iraq war has had one important, pernicious impact on US interests in Asia: it has consumed US attention."

This has prevented the US from following up in sufficient detail on some positive developments in Asia. Green also acknowledges that the US's reputation has taken a battering among Muslim populations in Asia.

Yet Green's positive thesis is fascinating. The US's three most important Asian alliances - with Australia, Japan and South Korea - have in his view been strengthened by the Iraq campaign.