Scott McClellan famously said during a press briefing on June 27, 2005
We'll continue to take the fight to the enemy. That's why we're fighting them in Iraq, and we're not fighting them here at home. We're fighting them in Iraq so that we can defeat them abroad, so we don't have to fight them here at home. That's one of the lessons of September 11th, is that we must take the fight to the enemy, and that's exactly what this President has done and will continue to do. And we recognize how high the stakes are in Iraq, and we will succeed."We Fight Them Over There So We Don't Fight Them Over Here" is one of the central themes in the Bush Administration's war on common sense. It is a sound bite defense of the Iraq War that has been repeated over and over again. For some it has become an article of faith.
Yesterday the New York Times published an article entitled Militants Widen Reach as Terror Seeps Out of Iraq by Michael Moss and Souad Mekhennet examining the growing problem of "foreign fighters" leaving Iraq to spread terror throughout the world.
In an April 17 report written for the United States government, Dennis Pluchinsky, a former senior intelligence analyst at the State Department, said battle-hardened militants from Iraq posed a greater threat to the West than extremists who trained in Afghanistan because Iraq had become a laboratory for urban guerrilla tactics.“If any country says it is safe from this, they are putting their heads in the sand,” Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, general director of the Internal Security Forces in Lebanon. If that doesn't wake you up this morning, read the entire article. It's scary.
The next time somebody tells you "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here," tell him to take his head out of the sand. Iraq has become a terrorist finishing school. New terrorists are graduating all the time.
