John Jarvis

I'm not as familiar with recent events in Iraq, but Baker's points re Afghanistan are great. Here's another quote that Mader didn't include: "Until the US-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan was the cockpit of ascendant Islamist terrorism. Consider the bigger picture. Between 1998 and 2005 there were five big terrorist attacks against Western targets - the bombings of the US embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, 9/11, and the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005. All owed their success either exclusively or largely to Afghanistan's status as a training and planning base for al-Qaeda." He does muddy the waters by including the Madrid and London bombings as examples (it is alleged that Khan trained in AF -- http://is.gd/MyR -- in the case of London, but I believe it was AQ-inspired in the case of Madrid) but his premise is correct. - John Jarvis