And another thing...

Addendum, of sorts, to Gull's last post. Yeah--that Monitor article does really blow away the very idea that what Osama bin Laden wants more than anything is for us to pull out of Iraq. But I want to add that that was always a ridiculous notion, on the face of it.

Al Qaeda's stated goal, for as long as it's existed, has been to provoke a "holy war" between Islam and the west. Their theological basis for this is complex and best left to people who know much, much more about Islam than I do, but the idea that what they want now is for us to stop being mired in a hopeless war in an Arab Muslim country that is, by all accounts, driving Muslims into radicalism and anti-western violence by the thousands is, at best, logically indefensible.