WSJ editorial on Iraq today makes a critical point: based on all we

now know, the resistance by combined forces of Saddam loyalists and

jihadists is not an ad hoc arrangement caused by the U.S. invasion, the

version of history the MSM and the Democrats are trying to sculpt as the

conventional wisdom. It is, instead, a strategy that was adopted before

the invasion — and a very shrewd one at that. Knowing they were unable

to match our forward march, the enemy played to its strength. It

planned to go dark and wage a guerrilla campaign on its own turf during

the occupation. Obviously, this suggests we could have planned better,

could have reacted better, and made a real error in pulling the plug on

the Marines’ Falluja operation this past spring. Falluja and the rest

of the Sunni triangle are proving to be the heart of this resistance —

which can’t be coopted and thus has to be wiped out. But it also shows

that this is a thought-out plan, not a later development — a plan that

banked on Saddam’s ties to terrorism which, notwithstanding the

nay-sayers, he assiduously developed throughout the 1990’s.