Quote:
Originally posted by nu2salt

Al-Queda was either neutralized in Afghanistan, or are all tied up in Iraq fighting our military, (or BOTH! )and therefore pose no immediate or direct threat to the U.S. or the world. How many times have I heard you and others on this board, or on TV, or in print, justify the war in Iraq by saying that by fighting them THERE we are safer HERE! That argument is TOTALLY OFF THE WALL and HOLDS NO WATER WHATSOEVER!!!
Let me add some additional facts to support the point.

 Quote:
Estimates by U.S. See More Rebels With More Funds
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
Published: October 22, 2004

...When foreign fighters and the network of a Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, are counted with home-grown insurgents, the hard-core resistance numbers between 8,000 and 12,000 people ... according to the American officials.

...This week, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, in releasing its annual global military survey, said perhaps 1,000 Islamic jihadists have entered Iraq to join the fight, and it estimated that it would take five years for the American military to prepare Iraqi forces to take over fully from the forces of the United States and its allies.

Lets see... 1.000 Al Qaeda foreign terrorists and 7.000 to 11.000 home-grown Iraqi insurgents are going to tie up 150,000 of the best soldiers in the world for at least 5 more years at the cost of a half billion dollars a day or so.

By going into Iraq we did not neutralized Al Qaeda. It is the other way around - Al Qaeda neutralized us.

It costs next to nothing to recruit, train, and arm an insurgent. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to do the same for an American combat soldier. (BTW, Dubya still owes American taxpayers a million dollars for his pilot training which was a total waste, as he never completed it.)

 Quote:
Officials Fear Iraq's Lure for Muslims in Europe
By CRAIG S. SMITH and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

ARIS, Oct. 22 - France's antiterrorist police on Friday identified a young Frenchman killed fighting the United States in Iraq, the first confirmed case of what is believed to be a growing stream of Muslims heading from Europe to fight what they regard as a new holy war.

Redouane el-Hakim, 19, the son of Tunisian immigrants, died during an American bombardment of insurgents in Falluja on July 17, according to an intelligence official close to the case.

Intelligence officials fear that for a new generation of disaffected European Muslims, Iraq could become what Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya were for European Islamic militants in past decades: a galvanizing cause that sends idealistic young men abroad, trains them and puts them in touch with a more radical global network of terrorists. In the past, many young Europeans who fought in those wars came back to Europe to plot terrorist attacks at home.

So you see Henry, your 'FEEL GOOD" war in Iraq, instead of becoming the killing fields for Al Qaeda terrorists, has become a new breeding ground for them and a quagmire for US.