The president didn’t get into the details on the Washington Post’s piece on the al-Qaeda effort to create an <a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34457-2003Sep6.html

” target=”_blank”> Iraq front. That’s too bad. But it’s clear after this speech that the Admistration considers Iraq to be the electric bug zapper of what — according to Christopher Hitchens (see Andrew Stuttaford’s post below) — constitutes the scum of the earth. That’s fine by me. Better we kill these fanatical murderers a couple thousand miles from us than in New York, Cleveland or Kansas City.