The war on whoever

I am going to break from the norm and just present what I deem worthy of reading from the NYTimes article on President Bush's speech today:

He said that the United States and its partners had disrupted at least 10 serious Al Qaeda plots in recent years - including three in the United States - and had blocked five attempts to case targets or infiltrate the country. By citing such numbers and cases, but without offering further specifics, President Bush appeared to be seeking to focus attention on the sweep, high stakes and successes of the antiterrorism campaign at a time when the war in Iraq has become increasingly unpopular and has opened divides even in Mr. Bush's own Republican Party.

After the president spoke today, the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, offered a toughly worded analysis, saying that Mr. Bush "continued to falsely assert there is a link between the war in Iraq and the tragedy of Sept. 11th, a link that did not and does not exist. The truth is the administration's mishandling of the war in Iraq has made us less safe, and Iraq risks becoming what it was not before the war: a training ground for terrorists," Mr. Reid said.

In his remarks, the president sharply rejected a suggestion - hinted at even by some in the military - that the very deployment of a large United States military force in Iraq was itself a catalyst for building the insurgent and terrorist ranks. Some critics, he said, had claimed "that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals." But, he continued, "I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001, and Al Qaeda attacked us anyway."