Michael Gordon, who has amassed a journalistic reputation of creating fantasist news stories that are inevitably more than kind to the Bu$h malAdministration, teams up with Jim Rutenberg in today’s NY Times to produce an article that seems almost modest in its attempts at accuracy.

Let’s start with the title: Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert

BAGHDAD, July 12 — In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.

There is no question that the group is one of the most dangerous in Iraq. But Mr. Bush’s critics argue that he has overstated the Qaeda connection in an attempt to exploit the same kinds of post-Sept. 11 emotions that helped him win support for the invasion in the first place.

Here’s the thing: al Qaeda is a real threat and danger to Western countries, and to the US in particular, specifically because we’re over there, in the part of the world they consider “theirs.” A lot of people, myself included, subscribe to the theory that this “Muslim backlash” that causes so many unimaginative Americans to wet their beds is a result of fears of cultural and economic imperialism, as much if not more than fears of Western military might.

The words and actions of the West over the last 150 years have shown that economic imperialism is a major force behind US presence in the Middle East.

Do we really need a strong, aggressive military footprint in the Middle East? Once you answer that question, the next logical question is the famous old standby of the college exam: Why or why not? (Explain your answer in 1,000 words minimum. Use as many bluebooks as you need.)

Mr Bu$h’s conflation of a small, local franchise with a supposed global octopus of terror is a linguistic expedient, aimed more at regaining control of the domestic political scene by trading on people’s fears and lack of knowledge than by truthfully setting forth the challenges of a world changed by his own mistakes.

The precise size of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is not known. Estimates are that it may have from a few thousand to 5,000 fighters and perhaps twice as many supporters. While the membership of the group is mostly Iraqi, the role that foreigners play is crucial.

Sadly, Messers Gordon and Rutenberg fail to explain why an organization they estimate at being somewhere between “several thousand” and “five thousand” is more dangerous than the 350,000-odd soldiers of Iraqi Army, which was dismissed in ignominy by L Paul Bremer and his happy little band of 20-something ideological warriors in the CPA, although they now insist it was upon Washington’s orders. (Washington, needless to say, denies this, because Washington never, ever makes mistakes.)

Many realists would be far more frightened of more than a quarter million armed, trained, experienced soldiers. Hubris Sonic, a snake-eater veteran writer at the old Steve Gilliard’s News Blog, had an article recently that explained some of these confusing facts.

But look at that EFFING HUGE green area. That consists of conventional forces facing us. Ex Army, Ex Bathist types, former Republican National Guard etc.You know, the ones that we sent home, armed to the teeth. Thanks Unka Jerry! These are the people we should actually be focusing on. For me, and maybe it’s my training, but I find the attempted linkage between Al Qaeda and AQIZ ridiculous and dangerously distracting. Not just from what we should be focusing on in Iraq, but what we should be doing fighting terrorism worldwide.

The NY Times article points to the always-mentioned “foreign elements” of al Qaeda, and its franchisee in Iraq: Osama bin Laden (Saudi), Ayman al-Zawahiri (Egyptian), Abu Ayyub al-Masri (Egyptian), and the late, unlamented Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Jordanian). Realistic estimates indicate there are relatively few actual foreign shooters in al-Qaeda in Iraq. It should also be noted that al Qaeda voluntarily subordinated itself to an overarching organization called the Islamic State in Iraq, which is composed of several resistance groups centered in Anbar province.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

We made the al Qaeda problem in Iraq. We did it by demobilizing the Army, de-Ba’athifying the bureaucracy, and failing to replace these elements of normalcy and structure with anything resembling a central government.

People should be carefully thinking about why all of Mr Bu$h’s plans appear to fail.