Spinal transplant successful; MSM stands up

As War Shifts, So Does the Message - LA Times

President Bush on Tuesday retooled his original argument for the Iraq war, justifying the U.S. military presence there as the solution to a problem that critics say the war itself caused.

More than two years ago, Bush argued that Saddam Hussein's control over Iraq could make the nation a haven for terrorists. But in his nationally televised speech, Bush asserted that the tumult that has followed Hussein's removal created the same threat.

In the lead-up to the war, Bush presented the invasion of Iraq primarily as a means of preventing the Iraqi dictator from providing nuclear, biological or chemical weapons to terrorists.

After coalition forces failed to find evidence of such weapons, and several investigations did not uncover meaningful links between Hussein and Al Qaeda, the president increasingly stressed the possibility that creating a democracy in Iraq could encourage democratic reform across the Middle East.

In his speech Tuesday before a crowd of soldiers at Ft. Bragg, N.C., Bush still emphasized the cause of democracy. He also mixed optimism about conditions in Iraq with sober assessments of the continuing challenge there.

But mostly Bush defended the war as a means of preventing another terrorist attack on the United States. The most striking argument Bush offered for his policy in Iraq was that the Mideast nation could become a sanctuary for terrorists if U.S. forces withdrew.

By completing "the mission," Bush declared, "we will prevent Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban — a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends."

That argument drew instant scorn from some Democrats, who argued that Bush was defending the continued military operations on the basis of a threat that did not exist before the invasion.

"Most Americans are aware that the hotbed of terrorism never existed in Iraq until we got there and it has, in fact, grown increasingly as we are there," Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, told CNN after the speech.

I had CNN on this morning. Limbaugh squeeze and normally reliable shill Daran Kagan had Republican Congressman Robin Hayes on arguing that Saddam was actually linked to 9/11. Kagan called him on it -- made it very clear he was utterly full of shit.

This is a remarkable turn of events. If major newspapers and the station of 24-hour Missing White Women can stand up, anything is possible.