On CNN this morning, my sparring partner, Vic Kamber, also said he was “offended” by the President’s references to 9/11. What a weird response this is. How does anyone get to be “offended” by the mention of 9/11? Agree or disagree, argue or don’t argue but puh-leeze don’t tell me your feelings have been hurt.

Andy McCarthy makes excellent points in his piece today about the strong evidence of direct Saddam-al Qaeda links. And Saddam’s support for terrorism – his terrorist training camp at Salman Pak, south of Baghdad, his tolerance of the Ansar al-Islam camp in northeast Iraq, and his funding of Hamas are not just evidence but proof that he was a terrorist master.

Also, as President Bush suggested, surely there are lessons to be learned from 9/11. For example, in the 1990s, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden took over Afghanistan and the United States did nothing. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the consequence of that inaction.

If, in this decade, we were to let al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi take over Iraq, what would be the likely the consequences of that?

And to those who don’t want to fight Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in Iraq, this question: Where would you rather fight them?

America’s main mission in this war is not to punish terrorists for acts they have committed in the past. That is secondary. Our main mission is to eliminate the terrorists who are planning attacks in the future.

The U.S. has not always responded seriously when people said they wanted to kill us. That’s a mistake we should never make again – even if that offends some people’s sensibilities.