“This is definitely a wake up call that points to the obvious: the Bush administration has failed in its counterterrorism efforts.”

“Islands of peace all over the world are disappearing. And the US policy in the Middle East is only accelerating their extinction.”

Not a single word of condemnation for the Islamist animals who perpetrated the atrocity in Jordan. Nothing about the fact that the Muslim world has done nothing about terrorism. It’s all George Bush’s fault and the war in Iraq!

Note that O’Rourke is a “progressive”.

Here's a word about the islamist terrorists Leigh - bad;

Rhian's piece was about the strategic success or otherwise of Bush's strategy. Without going into a long winded account of the reasons for the war - the process is failing, it has engendered further atrocities and will do so for a long time - most strategic analysts recognise the over all handling of the peace and even certain elements of the war the (taking of Faluhja in particular) has been and continues to be inept.

It will be quite some time if at all before we find out the truth about Iraq - civilain deaths, death by friendly fire, renewed corruption within the Iraqui state and within the world of those pledged to rebuild it from the rubble - all these matters are worthy areas of debate analysis and investigation - we can only speculate given the history of dishonest representation of this war by our leaders.

All of those things can be held to be true at the same time as being vehemently opposed to the terorrist movement - it certainly is not a form of apology for terorrist atrocity.

It appears that the Iraqi's want the occupation troops out of their country, given time the different sects may resolve their differences or they may not.
Whatever will be, it is up to them and they should be left to work it out.
In the meantime the best thing everyone else can do is to invent another means of driving vehicles because the end of oil is in sight one way or another.
East is east and the West had best keep out of it.

Duh ! When are you people going to wake up, Bushe's strategy in Iraq is working, despite what you hear, see and read in the media.
Many make the mistake of taking the words that flow from his mouth as the truth, when the exact opposite is true.
The strategy in Iraq is to divide the differing sects and encourage them to go for each other's throats, this is a U.S. strategy that has worked very well in previous and similar engagements.
By encouraging the Iraqi's to fight amongst themselves, the Bush Administration can use this as justification for their troops to remain there keeping the waring parties apart, they also reap a bonus benefit if Iraq is split into different sectors representing Sunni's, Shia and Kurds.
They will benefit hands down, if this happens, because instead of dealing with ONE centralised Government who they would have to appease, they'd be dealing with smaller entities who would be easier to deal with and cheaper to appease, all the time the U.S. will benefit hugely by the control it excerts through it's sycophant puppets that pretend to have the people's interests at heart, but are really more concerned in squirreling away as much money as they can whilst in their positions of power.