Bush is at odds with the American public

and a restive congressional

majority over the Iraq war,

and even some Republicans talk about

imposing new requirements

that could trigger a troop withdrawal.

It's time to play the Al Qaeda card again

Bush and Cheney speak as though

the enemy in Iraq is a terrorist international,

a stateless al-Qaeda dedicated to establishing

an Islamic superstate and bringing down the US

That is 99.99% wrong

Almost all those fighting

in Iraq are Iraqi nationalists

In a speech about Iraq on Wednesday morning at the Willard Hotel, the president mentioned Osama bin Laden's group -- 27 times.

"For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it's whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11," Bush told a group of construction contractors.

Never mind all that talk about sectarian strife and civil war in Iraq. "The primary reason for the high level of violence is this: Al-Qaeda has ratcheted up its campaign of high-profile attacks," Bush disclosed.

The man who four years ago admitted "no evidence" of an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks now finds solid evidence of a role in Iraq by the Sept. 11 hijackers.

"I don't need to remind you who al-Qaeda is," Bush reminded. "Al-Qaeda is the group that plot and planned and trained killers to come and kill people on our soil. The same bunch that is causing havoc in Iraq were the ones who came and murdered our citizens."

This new line of argument would seem to present some difficulty for the White House, and not only because, as the Pentagon inspector general reported last month, al-Qaeda had no ties to Iraq before the U.S. invasion in 2003.

More to the point: If the problem in Iraq isn't sectarian strife, then why is the U.S. military building walls to separate Sunni enclaves from Shiite neighborhoods? Dana Millbank @ WaPo

On How there is not Really any al-Qaeda in Iraq

I caught John Edwards on Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room Wednesday afternoon. Blitzer asked him about Bush's remarks on al-Qaeda being enemy number one in Iraq.

Edwards replied with great good sense and admirable forthrightness, and I'll quote it in a second. But one thing I advise candidates in both parties to do is start recognizing that what the US military calls the Iraqi insurgency is primarily Iraqi nationalists, not al-Qaeda.

The US military and politicians made a key mistake when they saw the North Vietnamese Communists of Ho Chi Minh as primarily Communists, when in fact they were Vietnamese nationalists. It was the nationalist component that proved so attractive to many of their collaborators in the south.

After the North Vietnamese Communists took over they almost immediately had a firefight with Communist China. It would be tragic if the US makes another such error in Iraq.

Bush and Cheney speak as though the enemy there is a terrorist international, a stateless al-Qaeda dedicated to establishing an Islamic superstate and bringing down the United States. That is 99.99% wrong. Almost all those fighting in Iraq are Iraqi nationalists.

Just as Communist Vietnam posed no real threat to the US and was of little use to other Communist states as an ally, so a post-US Iraq would be a country of Iraqi nationalists (with, admittedly, ethno-religious subnationalisms playing either a decisive or an important role).

So here is the exchange between Blitzer and Edwards:

BLITZER: But do you dispute that al Qaeda has a presence in the Al Anbar Province, in other provinces in Iraq, that they're trying to establish a base there, from which to do their evil deeds?

EDWARDS: No, of course I don't dispute that. That's obvious.

But -- but the president of the United States has made this situation worse. He hasn't made it better. And the question is, what is the plan that will maximize the chances for us being successful there?

I believe -- and I think many of the leaders in the Congress believe the same thing -- that, as America starts to withdraw its presence in Iraq, we shift the responsibility to the Sunni and Shia leadership, and we create a greater possibility of there being a political reconciliation.

It is that political reconciliation and that resolution that creates a more secure environment on the ground, and will help stop what al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are attempting to do in Iraq.

I concur in Edwards' analysis of the situation in Iraq. But I think it would help the public debate if he and others began querying the entire idea of "al-Qaeda in Iraq."

He gave that one away, and when you give that one away, you risk giving away everything.

Al-Qaeda is technically defined as persons who have given their fealty to Usama Bin Laden and who have been given an operation to do by him. It is sort of like being a "made man" in the Cosa Nostra. Not every two bit gangster is a mafioso, and not every violent Salafi is al-Qaeda.

A recent study by Gen. Barry McCaffrey suggested that there are in fact 100,000 insurgents (I prefer the term guerrilla) in Iraq, not the 20,000 to 25,000 usually estimated by the US military.

Iraq's previous interior minister estimated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq at less than a thousand. Most of these are Salafi Jihadis of one sort or another (revivalist Sunnis).

So 99,000 insurgents are Iraqis. And none of them is al-Qaeda in the sense of being loyal to the organization or fighting for Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

They are fighting for some vision of the Iraqi nation, whether inflected by religion or not. Juan Cole