Abstract terrorism

The Bush administration's desperate efforts to keep the ill-planned mess in Iraq under the control of the ill-planners continues with the most abstract evocation of September 11th that I can recall.

Today, it was stunning and odd. Apparently, something like sorcery or ghostmanship took place on September 11th, and Saddam was involved.

Condoleezza Rice on Meet the Press today:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn back to Iraq. The war is now in its fourth year, and these are the grim statistics: U.S. troops killed, 2,316; wounded/injured 17,271; Iraqis killed, an estimated, estimated number of 30,000; 130,000 American troops on the ground. When you were planning the war some three and a half years ago, did you have any idea that three years into the war those are the numbers that you would be confronting?

SEC’Y RICE: Well, I certainly thought that it would be difficult. I don’t think anyone knew precisely what we would be facing in terms of numbers. And look, every one of those deaths is, is mourned by people in the administration because these are families that have lost husbands and wives and daughters and sons. But we also know that nothing of value is ever won without sacrifice.

We’re in Iraq because the United States of America faces a different kind of enemy in a different kind of war. And we have to have a different kind of Middle East if we’re ever going to resolve the, the, the problems of an ideology of hatred that was so great that people flew airplanes into buildings. Iraq was—Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a threat. Now that the...

MR. RUSSERT: But, but Saddam was not related to flying airplanes into buildings.

SEC’Y RICE: No, and we have never said that Saddam—Saddam was not related to the events of 9/11. But if you really believe that the only thing that happened on 9/11 was people flew airplanes into buildings, I think you have a very narrow view of what we faced on 9/11. We faced the, the outcome of an ideology of hatred throughout the Middle East that had to be dealt with. Saddam Hussein was a part of that old Middle East. The new Iraq will be a part of a new Middle East, and we will all be safer.

Rice is greatly mistaken if she honestly believes that anything but that old Middle East is thriving in Iraq at present. That old Middle East is anti-west, pro-violence, sectarian and will return to America's shores. It has paid a visit to London and Madrid recently, as well as numerous other places.

The nonsense of Saddam as part of some old philosophy that needed to be countered and also included the hijackers continued on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: Here's what Republican Senator Chuck Hagel said a week ago today, Republican senator from Nebraska: "Are we better off today than we were three years ago? Is the Middle East more stable than it was three years ago? Absolutely not. It's more unstable."

RICE: Well, the question is not just is it unstable but is it moving in a better direction than it was when it was supposedly stable?

We thought it was stable for 60 years. And those authoritarian governments on which we counted for stability ended up producing an ideology of hatred or allowing an ideology of hatred so great to form and form terrorist groups that people flew planes into our buildings on September 11.

BLITZER: Are you referring to Saudi Arabia?

RICE: I'm talking about the entire Middle East. If you look at Al Qaida, you will find names from many of the governments in...

BLITZER: Well, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

RICE: Well, you'll also find that there are names from many other countries in the region.

So the authoritarianism that we associated with stability was, indeed, a false stability. Sixty years of that policy produced not just September 11 but the Cole and the bombings of our embassies, going all the way, really, frankly, back to the bombings of the '80s, the terrorist attacks of the '80s. So when people say, is it more stable today, I think the question is not "stable." The question is, are we moving in a direction in which Kuwaiti women now have the right to vote, in which Syrian forces are out of Lebanon and they are going to be able to work democratically, in which Yasser Arafat's corrupt regime is, indeed, gone? And yes, that's produced a difficult circumstance with Hamas, but Palestinians have had the chance, the right to speak their minds about who will govern them.

The point, Wolf, is that we had a false stability. It is not as if we disturbed a placid and functioning Middle East...

BLITZER: I just want to press you on this point.

RICE: ... in which our security interests were not at risk.

BLITZER: Did Saddam Hussein and his regime have anything to do with 9/11?

RICE: Saddam Hussein, and we have said this many times, as far as we know, did not order September 11, may not have even known of September 11. But that's a very narrow definition of what caused September 11.

If you think that what caused September 11 was that the people who flew airplanes in caused September 11, then no, Iraq has no relationship.

But if you think that this was a broader problem of an ideology of hatred, of terrorism becoming an acceptable means in places where there was a freedom deficit and where there was no possibility for legitimate political discourse, then you realize that you have to have a different kind of Middle East.

And a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein at the middle of it is unthinkable.

Somehow, once again, Saddam was at the forefront of al Qaeda's barbaric assault on American civilians on September 11th. The connection is now so certain that Saddam didn't even have to know about it in order to be involved.

There is spin in great quantities today. It is a vapid and annoying fact of life. This, however, is not spin. It is pathetic insanity. The last throes of an administration.

Also notice that Rice did not want to accuse Saudi Arabia of involvement in September 11th, but made a cryptic reference to other nationalities, an obvious repetition of the vague accusation leveled against Saddam to sell this war.

Take a look at today's events in Iraq to see the absence of terrorism and anti-American sentiments. Two paragraphs from CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- At least 20 members of the militia loyal to a radical Shiite Muslim cleric have been killed in ongoing clashes with the U.S. military in Baghdad, Iraqi police said Sunday. ...

Thirty beheaded bodies were found along a road in southern Baquba, the Iraqi Army said Sunday.