CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Okay. Now I’m confused.

A senior American counterterrorism official, as The New York Times identified him yesterday, has this to say:

Stopping [terrorist] recruitment for Iraq where they may do harm to U.S. troops is our highest priority.

What happened to President Bush’s assertion on Sept. 23, 2004, that:

If we stop fighting the terrorists in Iraq, they would be free to plot and plan attacks elsewhere — in America and other free nations.

Or, as U.S. Army Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told CNN’s “Late Edition” in July 2003:

This is what I would call a terrorist magnet, where America, being present here in Iraq, creates a target of opportunity ... But this is exactly where we want to fight them. ... This will prevent the American people from having to go through their attacks back in the United States.

This was the so-called “flypaper” theory defined, another after-the-fact attempt to justify our invasion, occupation and failure to pacify Iraq.

I have yet to hear an explanation of how preventing terrorists from reaching Iraq squares with keeping it the “central front” in the war on terrorism.

I thought we had those heathen devils right where we wanted them! Hell, I thought we were shipping them in.