If you liked the "Domino Theory," you'll love "Bush's Latest Iraq War Lies"

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Bush's Latest Iraq War Lies
By Robert Parry
(October 16, 2005)

With his earlier war rationales shattered, George W. Bush now says the Iraq War must be continued indefinitely because of the presence of foreign Islamic fighters - even though they are estimated to represent only a tiny fraction of the Iraqi insurgency and might well quit the struggle if U.S. troops were to leave Iraq.
In an Oct. 6 speech aimed at rallying U.S. public support for the Iraq War, Bush painted a harrowing picture of the consequences that would follow an American withdrawal. Bush warned of "a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia" and the strategic isolation of the United States. [emphasis mine]. Bush's alarmist vision, however, clashes with both recent intelligence assessments on the significance of foreign fighters to the Iraq War and fears expressed in an intercepted letter purportedly written by al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri to al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi.
The "Zawahiri letter" cautions that an American withdrawal might prompt the "mujahedeen" in Iraq to "lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal." To avert this military collapse, the letter calls for selling these foreign fighters on a broader vision of an Islamic "caliphate" in the Middle East, although nothing nearly as expansive as the global empire that Bush depicted.
But the "Zawahiri letter" indicates that even this more modest "caliphate" is just an "idea" that he mentioned "only to stress " that the mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq.
In other words, assuming U.S. intelligence is correct that the letter was written by Zawahiri, al-Qaeda sees promoting the dream of an unlikely "caliphate" as a needed sales pitch to keep the jihadists from simply returning to their everyday lives once the Americans depart Iraq.

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