Gateway Pundit goes off on one about a report in McClatchy Newspapers about Al Qaida’s operations in Iraq. The reporting is quite interesting, but also rather clumsy, especially in the passage the Pundit takes offense at:

…As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq. “The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims,” he said.

The rest of the piece pretty much makes the point that Al Qaida wasn’t operating in Iraq before the war. That’s only technically true; the two sides did meet on several occasions to discuss cooperation, though it’s not clear whether their shared aims or natural antipathy would have won out. But in any case the article is making a reasonable point until it hits the above quote, where it apparently just goes nuts.

Here’s the thing, though. Al Qaida in Iraq (‘AQI’) is not the same as Al Qaida. AQI was created as a direct result of the American invasion of Iraq by people not blind to the value of the Al Qaida ‘brand’. That decision appears to have been one-sided; AQI decided that they were Al Qaida first, and negotiated with the Al Qaida leadership after. In fact to this day it’s not clear how much of a link there is between the two organizations. Certainly they have (some) shared goals, and shared sympathies. But to say that they are the same entity is a case that can be made, but for now at least not proven.

So the McClatchy piece, or at least this paragraph, is startlingly clumsy, and quite possibly wrong. It is not, however, nuts.

From a post at Gateway Pundit that makes some reasonable points, a couple of mistakes. First, an easy lie about money.

And, the cost of this war– something the Democrats are focusing on now that Iraq is stabilizing– is lower than Vietnam or the Cold War:

Lets say I pay you $10 a day, and charge you $1 for food. Then one day I raise the cost of your food to $2. Would you say that the cost of your food was lower? Of course not. But how about if I increased your pay to $30 a day. Now the cost of your food is lower, right? Again, no. It’s certainly more affordable, which is great, but it’s higher, not lower.

Well that’s what the Pundit is trying to sell you; something costs less if you earn more. I can’t scare up the site, but I read recently that, allowing for the natural uncertainties in costing such things, this is now the second most expensive war in US history, after WWII. Expensive as in ‘cost is higher’. It’s more affordable than some others because of the strength (to now, at least) of the US economy, which is a great thing. But it’s an easier sell to lie and say it’s cheaper, than to tell the truth and say it’s more affordable.

The second lie is less obvious, but surprisingly similar. The stated aim of the ‘surge’ (or escalation, as it ought to be known) was basically to advance and consolidate the political stability of Iraq. There are two facets to that. The first is making space for the politicians to do their thing, and in that the escalation has done an impressive job. The problem is that without the second part – actually making things happen – it has failed almost entirely. And without that second step the statement that “Truly- The Surge Is Historic in Its Success” is as much of a lie as the lower costs of the war. It’s a good and noble thing to cut civilian and military casualties, but sadly it’s a long way from ‘mission accomplished’.