A conspiracy of allegedly al-Qaeda-affiliated criminals planning to blow up a bunch of planes? That is terrorism, and a criminal act. I note that they were caught by police activity, not bombing the crap out of neighborhoods or raping and killing civilians.

Afghanistan? (Remember that Taliban country where 9/11 was planned and where al-Qaeda has been holed up for years?) That should be a front in the war on Islamic fundamentalist extremism and terrorism, but the Bush Administration has pretty much ignored it. What happened to the rebuilding? What happened to forging a new society? Oh, yeah, that's right: Saddam was "thumbing his nose" at Bush, so we had to drop going after al-Qaeda and start punching the tarbabe called Iraq.

"Staying the course" in Iraq? That is failed imperialism, a conversion of what was a non-critical foreign relations problem into a bloody costly disaster.

And yet people like Joe Lieberman continue to equate Iraq with fighting terrorism.

The American people can smell bullshit, and the bulloney that the war on Iraq had anything to do with fighting "terrorism" after 9/11 is pretty damned ripe.

Yet, to read the right-wing bloggers, poor pro-war Joe Lieberman is just the victim of unfair politics. That's because they're so blinded by their gang colors partisanship that they cannot see what a bunch of fools they have calling the shots for the whole country (and the world).

So while the wingnuts weep for Joe, I weep for the dead civilians in Iraq and Lebanon who have been killed by "surgical" bombing in the name of this "war on terror."