George W. Bush in recent speeches has responded to the conclusions of a recently-released April National Intelligence Estimate that "the Iraq war has fueled terror growth around the world"¦" (The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/06, p. A18.). Mr. Bush's comments offer an opportunity to clearly examine the flawed, deceptive logic employed by this administration in justifying the indefensible.

In a September 26th speech, President Bush stated: "Some people have guessed what's in the report and have concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree. I think it's naïve. I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to harm the American people makes us less safe." (The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/06) Mr. Bush is here once again linking Iraq to terrorists, though he has himself publicly admitted that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. He says that those who believe that "going into Iraq was a mistake" are mistaken because they "believe that going on the offensive against people that want to harm the American people makes us less safe." He thus characterizes "going into Iraq" as "going on the offensive against people that want to harm the American people." This reaffirms his previous efforts to drill a connection home that never existed; it labels the people of Iraq as wishing to do Americans harm before our invasion of their country, when it was Saudis and al Qaeda who (we are told) piloted the 9/11 planes; it distorts the views of those who oppose the war as ill-considered and unjust, for they do not "believe that going on the offensive against people that want to harm the American people makes us less safe." No, Mr. President, they believe that going on the offensive against people (the Iraqis) who had done nothing at all to the American people made us less safe. And apparently this is also the consensus view of the 16 intelligence agencies which created the NIE. But Bush disagrees"¦strongly.

George W. Bush refused to heed the shrill warnings from non-partisan Middle East academics and experts prior to his invasion of Iraq, who almost uniformly cautioned that Iraq would likely devolve into civil war, and that the U.S. presence there would foster increased Arab resentment which would bolster membership in terrorist organizations. He would not listen to their predictions, and now that 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have affirmed that what they forecast has transpired, he certainly will not let them stand in the way of his ideological fantasies either. Truth and fact are anathema to this man.

Continuing with his perverse logic, George W. says in the same speech:

You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq, we would see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement requires us to ignore 20 years of experience. We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September 11"¦.We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993"¦.We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions. They kill in order to achieve their objectives. (WSJ, 9/27/06, p.A18)

Let's parse this through:

1) "to suggest that, if we weren't in Iraq"¦." Mr. President, this was the "suggestion" of the consensus view of 16 federal intelligence agencies, all of whose resources were presumably combined to reach this conclusion.

2) We do not have to "ignore 20 years of experience" to see the common sense logic, confirmed by this report, that to embark on a war in Iraq would exacerbate tensions in the Middle East. We were not in Iraq when any of these events occurred because Iraq had almost no ties to terrorist groups, and Saddam had none. We had not invaded Iran or Syria over this period either, but that does not mean that Muslim resentment would not be increased if we had done so. Our intelligence agencies report to the president that the war in Iraq has made more Muslims rise up against America, and Bush says "that can't be, cause al Qaeda attacked the U.S. before we invaded Iraq." His words are not logical, and are deliberately intended to deceive, once again linking the War in Iraq with the war against those who attacked us - the whole point of the NIE is that Iraq surely has become a terrorist training ground, but this is not chicken-or-egg logic: Bush tries to imply through false logic that the War in Iraq was a response to 9/11 and the war on terror; it is clear though that the opposite has occurred, and that Iraq has been transformed into a terrorist stronghold because of the Iraq War. The difference is not a small one"¦

3) "My judgment is"¦" Is this man really our supreme leader, unresponsive as he is to the demands of reality? Ignoring his own government's intelligence reports, like he ignored the fact that most pre-war intelligence available suggested that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD? Our country and our troops have been led into war, the use of torture, and the alienation of the whole world against America, all because of this man's "judgment."

4) To argue that invading Iraq did not aggravate tensions and increase anti-American sentiment because America had already been attacked previously is like arguing that rubbing noxious filth into an open wound did not result in infection because the tissue was already damaged. George W. Bush's Iraq debacle, perceived (correctly, according to Christian doctrine) by the Muslim world as a Crusade, has rubbed salt and rank bitterness in the wounds of Arab resentment at U.S. support for Israel and intrusion into Arab culture. This same deadly cure is administered by Bush when he repeats his personal (or Rovian?) mantra, that jihadists "hate us because we're free." As long as we call war peace, as Bush seeks now to do, we will have only more war. And the application of immoral interrogation techniques is adding yet more infection to this international disease of anti-Americanism.

5) Later in this speech, Bush identifies that the "other excuse" for Islamic hatred is "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." That is, if it weren't for Iraq, Islamist extremism would still increase because of the "excuse" of the longstanding Mideast conflict. Dismissing the Arab angst over the Israel-Palestine conflict as an "excuse" justifies the Arab perspective that the U.S. (now more than ever before, under George W.) favors Israeli over Arab interests in that dispute. In Muslim eyes, this appears to be what it is - an alignment of Christian with Jewish interests against the welfare and interests of Islam. Mr. Bush, why would those who have attacked us not just say "We hate you because you're so darned free it drives us crazy"? Why do they instead keep saying "we hate you because you dominate us economically, because you created (and militarily and diplomatically maintain) Israel no matter what it does to Arab children; because your imperialist/materialist culture is an assault on our faith and way of life, and we perceive it to be evil and do not want it forced upon us"? Americans who swallow Bush's "they hate us because we're free" lie apparently have little interest in seeking the truth about U.S. government policy and its effects on foreign peoples. And truthfully, Mr. Bush, it is not the American people they hate but the American federal government, which more and more Americans are coming to perceive as their enemy also. The more Bush & co. shift blame for these tumultuous times on religious extremism, the more they shift attention away from the root problems which have arisen from government policy which favors short-term corporate profit over long-term American goodwill. And the more he does this, the more a global religious war becomes likely: Bush continues to throw kerosene on the fire of Muslim resentment.

Bush also dismisses the examination of the consequences of the Iraq venture as politically timed, yet he is in fact trying to do the opposite: use allegations of political motivation to dismiss factual information compiled by federal intelligence agencies. Even if the NIE was revealed with political (patriotic?) motive, does that motivation taint the report's contents? One is reminded of one of Mr. Bush's early lies, in which it was disclosed on the eve of the 2000 election that he had been arrested for DWI and had deliberately deceived the American public about this fact. Indignantly proclaiming that the information was politically motivated, he adroitly avoided accountability on that one too (the "unaccountability president"?), explaining that he lied because he didn't want his daughters to have his DWI as a role model. Come now, George, your daughters saw you stinking drunk (and driving drunk) throughout their childhood: what of the example you set for them of lying to the American people instead of coming clean, like a good Christian? Presumably, pending mid-term elections had no influence on the contents of the NIE. The intelligence community reported that the Iraq War has caused an increase in terrorist activity, and George Bush's complaint is that this is politically motivated"¦.because it was released to the public. What if George committed murder - would he dismiss reports of his crime as politically motivated?

One must ruminate carefully over one of Mr. Bush's comments: "We're not going to let lies and propaganda by the enemy dictate how we win this war." (WSJ, 9/27/06). Do we define the enemy as he who spouts "lies and propaganda"? It is extremely clear that lies and propaganda are very much "dictating" this war. Will Americans not see through the shallow and specious logic our esteemed leader continues to feed us? Will Christians in America continue to abandon their loyalty to Christ in their blind support of a persistent dissembler?

Let us fight falsehood with truth, and not allow America's (and the world's) children to encounter a future shaped by such shallow and duplicitous logic as that which regularly infuses this administration's speeches and policies.

John Stoddard Klar www.christianwords.us