President Bush's speech yesterday made heavy use of the words "Al Qaeda" and "terror" in an effort to play on people's fears and increase confusion about what is going on in Iraq. According to the President's version of reality, we are in Iraq to fight "Al Qaeda in Iraq", an organization that didn't exist before the US invasion of Iraq and whose relationship -- if any -- to the original Al Qaeda is quite murky. Meanwhile, as NPR explains in a recent special report , the National Intelligence Estimate confirms that the real Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden's organization, has been building up its strength along the Afghan-Pakistan border for the last year while the US continues to pour money and troops into the growing chaos of Iraq.

In a rebuttal following the President's speech, Senators Kerry and Reed pointed out that while Al Qaeda is a serious concern, it is only a small part of the problem we face in Iraq: other groups are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the violence there. Moreover, the fact that there was never any Al Qaeda-affiliated group of any kind in Iraq before the US invaded gives the lie to the notion that we went into Iraq to fight Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, the ongoing US presence in Iraq gives a tremendous boost to Al Qaeda's recruitment efforts. Senator Kerry noted that the legislation he and others have proposed to begin the withdrawal of US troops specifically allows the President discretion to maintain whatever personnel is needed to pursue Al Qaeda; he argued, however, that this would be handled more effectively through special operations units. He pointed out that "Al-Qaeda gets stronger because we're there, Mr. President, not weaker. And if we begin to shift this responsibility to the Iraqis, most of the experts will tell you, the Iraqis do not want al-Qaeda in Iraq. And if we begin to reduce our footprint, I'm confident the Iraqis will begin to reduce the al-Qaeda footprint."