Recommitment to the mission: WHAT mission?

Today President Bush reaffirmed his dedication to the war in Iraq, in order to 'defeat terrorists.'

He has to, since with the Iraqi constitution both missing two deadlines, and clearly pointing towards some sort of an Islamic republic in which women in particular will have less rights in matters like inheritance, divorce and custody than they had under Saddam Hussein, the whole 'Democracy' argument is becoming increasingly hard to hold together.

Of course, it was never about terrorism. If it were, why would we have taken the focus off of the world's number one terrorist, who was never in Iraq? And why, if we thought that terrorism was such a big deal in Iraq, did we let Iraq's top terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, walk free because we didn't even think while planning the war that he was worth including as a target?

And here is the real question: HOW will keeping our army in Iraq do a darn thing to prevent terrorists from attacking us here? The senior leadership of al-Qaeda are free somewhere, probably planning more terrorist attacks. The networks they use to implement them are not in Iraq either, a pretty out of the way place if you want to get people, weapons or money into the United States. And, as we saw in the London train bombings, they only need a small number of people to carry them out (ditto Madrid and 9/11) so it is hard to argue that because several thousand terrorists are fighting against us in Iraq, that precludes a small number from operating elsewhere.

So, in short, our army in Iraq is doing nothing at all to save America from terrorists, especially since Iraq has now become a rich recruiting ground FOR the terrorists.

We are not safer from terrorists, and the best outcome we can hope for in Iraq is a stable, cleric run Islamic state, not a Democracy (worse potential outcomes mostly involve civil war).

So, why did we go there again?