This week's cognitive dissonance

In case you needed another reason to believe that the war in Iran Iraq [thanks, a] was motiviated by interests other than fighting terrorism, it's this. We're not even interested in going after the guy who started this whole thing (emphasis mine):

The Army's highest-ranking officer said Friday that he was unsure whether the U.S. military would capture or kill Osama bin Laden, adding, "I don't know that it's all that important, frankly."

"So we get him, and then what?" asked Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the outgoing Army chief of staff, at a Rotary Club of Fort Worth luncheon. "There's a temporary feeling of goodness, but in the long run, we may make him bigger than he is today.

"He's hiding, and he knows we're looking for him. We know he's not particularly effective. I'm not sure there's that great of a return" on capturing or killing bin Laden.

Um, WHAT?

As far as I'm concerned, Dubya and Sith Lord Cheney are no longer given permission to invoke 9/11 in any future speeches, since they seem to think that capturing the mastermind behind the attacks really doesn't produce "that great of a return."

... Schoomaker's remarks echoed comments last year by Vice President Cheney, who seemed to play down the value of capturing or killing bin Laden days before the Bush speech. "He's not the only source of the problem, obviously. . . . If you killed him tomorrow, you'd still have a problem with al-Qaeda," the vice president said.

To be sure, terrorism itself is a problem that transcends any one individual, but it's obvious that we've wasted a lot of time and money pursuing the wrong guy and the wrong country. That is, of course, if you're still working under the assumption that the war in Iraq was begun in response to the 9/11 attacks.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is rebuilding itself and getting stronger.


(Thanks to AMERICAblog for the link.)