Boy, the far left is tying itself into mental knots trying to throw cold water on the Iraq war and its path to success. Needless to say the Twisted Logic Express is being led by the Gray Lady herself. Check out this headline, and then compare it with what is actually being reported on (and twisted beyond reality):

Foreign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to Allies of U.S.

Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.

The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid’s target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.

The most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006.

The records also underscore how the insurgency in Iraq remains both overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni. American officials now estimate that the flow of foreign fighters was 80 to 110 per month during the first half of this year and about 60 per month during the summer. The numbers fell sharply in October to no more than 40, partly as a result of the Sinjar raid, the American officials say.

I feel like I am playing six degrees to Kevin Bacon. We KNOW that al-Qaeda gains support from pockets of extreme Islam all over the world. Pakistan, another US ally, has a significant terrorist population. Britain has a thousands of extremist Muslims they are monitoring. Canada is one of the places many Islamists ‘retired’ to after the Afghan campaigns against the Russians. How is all this connected to America? What mystical or magical point is there in linking terrorists to countries tied to America? It is truly ridiculous!

And to claim the majority of Iraqi insurgents were Iraqi is another “Duh!” statement. al-Qaeds wanted to turn Iraq into an allied state. More than that, they promised it could host the capitol of the modern caliphate. This promise was so strong they named two capitols (because they lost one (Ramadi), and then went on to lose the second (Baquba)). So they enlisted Iraqis in their crusade against the west. That much is obvious.

What is also now known is that vast majority of Iraqis realized they were duped after the foreign fighters used them as propaganda props and blew them up so they could get on Western TV News. The Iraqis were also brutalized, their daughters taken in forced marriages, and some killed as examples of the power of the new Islamo Fascist order. Yes, the initial plan was Iraqis would join with al-Qaeda’s foreign fighters and take over Iraq. Something Liberals seem to deny even though the evidence, as they show, is overwhelming.

The end result was the Iraqis realized their mistake, joined with Americans and the new Shiite led government, and started hunting down the foreign fighters. Now it is pretty obvious why foreign fighters are no longer flocking to Iraq – if the Liberals would stop obsessing about Bush and focus on Iraq: (a) The foreign fighters are not welcomed in Iraq and will be hunted down and killed, (b) the foreign fighters may have realized they were simply killing fellow Muslims and only the insanely fanatic would continue to try and go to Iraq, and (c) al-Qaeda lost, everyone knows it, and the word is out that they will no longer take action in Iraq since it kills innocent fellow Muslim more than Americans.

So the NY Times can try and link the foreign fighters to America – but it is a ridiculous connection. And it won’t help them with their newfound destroyed credibility. They bet on al-Qaeda to win and the US to lose, and they were dead wrong. No amount of pretzel logic can eliminate or hide that bold fact.