the balding eagle vs the circular firing squad part XXVI

Why is the debate on Iraq and terrorism all sound and fury and no well debate ?

As Josh Marshall points out, Clarke has been savagely attacked largely because all informed people agree with his substantive claims (and agreed before he made them).

Now this is largley confirmed by an article by Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post.
Of course another hypothesis is that Kessler is cheating (wonder if Atrios would accuse him of working for Pravda on the Potomac). ISince the question is whether there is really a debate, we should know soon.

The headline is (as is common) misleading. All the experts interviewed by Kessler agree that the invasion of Iraq weakened the war on al Qaeda and on terrorism generally.

The expert most in favor of the invasion of Iraq is quoted as follows

"But Eliot Cohen, director of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and an advocate of attacking Iraq, argues that Clarke's analysis wrongly assumes the battle against terrorism paralyzes the government when it comes to waging other wars. He said that if one assumes that the fight against terrorism is a multi-year effort that could stretch decades, then "there is nothing the U.S. government can do for 30 years but fight al Qaeda." He noted that the bulk of the fighting in Iraq was carried out by military units, such as the 101st Airborne, that were not involved in Afghanistan.

Cohen agreed, however, that a war the scale of the Iraq invasion could divert the attention of senior officials from other issues, such as fighting terrorism. Pat Lang, who was head Middle East and South Asia intelligence in the Defense Intelligence Agency for seven years, said: "When you commit as much time and attention and resources as we did to Iraq, which I do not believe is connected to the worldwide war against the jihadis, then you subtract what you could commit to the war on terrorism. You see that especially in the Special Forces commitment, as we have only so many of them." "

That is the quoted expert who disagrees most with Clarke and he clearly agrees.

The first paragraph sets up a straw man. The argument that the USA should have focused on al Qaeda until it was rolled back, does not imply that the USA must not invade anyone who is not sheltering al Qaedafor 30 years.

Now that would be fine by me, but there is no evidence that Clarke agrees with me.

Notice, by the way, that if Rice were telling the truth, the Bush administration approach would indeed be the straw man presented by Cohen. Cohen is not worried, because of course he knows she is lying.

I'd say, the claim that there is a consensus that the invasion of Iraq interfered with the war on terror can be considered firmly supported by the evidence so long as the article is not challenged by reasoned letters to the editor from foreign policy experts who do not work for the Bush administration.

By the way the headline "Clarke Reignites Iraq Debate
Analysts are split on whether invasion hurt war on terrorism. "
is, given the content of the article, psychotic.