Posted on: Wednesday, February 11, 2004

EDITORIAL
Seized al-Qaida letter offers a mixed blessing

It's puzzling to observe the Bush administration's reaction to a 17-page letter attributed to an al-Qaida leader seized in Iraq. Having found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the administration has, after the fact, attempted to shift the reason for going to war to the fight against global terrorism and the need to oust Saddam Hussein.

Apparently the White House is hoping the letter will buttress this new justification for the war. "Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism," said its spokesman.

The new argument is a bit of a two-bladed sword, however, since the White House has acknowledged that al-Qaida had little connection with the Saddam regime or significant presence in Iraq before the war.

The seized letter certainly suggests a bloody and virulent foreign terrorist presence in post-war Iraq. The letter writer's claim to have directed 25 suicide bombings is being taken seriously, and yesterday's car bombing at a police station in Iskandiriya, 30 miles south of Baghdad, might well be No. 26.

The local police chief said the latest attack, as others, was carried out by a suicide bomber, and that most of the upward of 50 fatalities were Iraqis queued up to apply for police jobs.

U.S. commanders have previously said that by far the biggest problem today in Iraq is a homegrown guerrilla insurgency, and that the Iraqi resistance sees al-Qaida as an unwelcome presence.

The difficulty for the White House is that foreign terrorists were only able to enter Iraq in significant numbers because of the post-invasion chaos caused by deficient planning for a contested occupation.