Izzat you?

Behold, the 20 million dollar man:

The leader of Iraq's banned Baath party, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has decided to join efforts by the Iraqi authorities to fight al-Qaeda, one of the party's former top officials, Abu Wisam al-Jashaami, told pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

"AlDouri has decided to sever ties with al-Qaeda and sign up to the programme of the national resistance, which includes routing Islamist terrorists and opening up dialogue with the Baghdad government and foreign forces," al-Jashaami said

Well, there's at least one Saddamist bigwig not afraid to admit he could work with the Islamists. But we already knew that.

Some speculated this announcement was triggered by an Interpol red notice on him (similar to Raghad Hussein) a few days ago. Both are believed to be deeply involved in aiding the very same freedom fighters Izzat now claims he's going to fight, a proclamation about as meaningful as a physics lesson from Rosie O'Donnell. After all, he's been dead for years. I'm more curious if we ever found any connection?

Meanwhile on the Iraq front, leading liberals and their friends in the mainstream media are jumping up and down at Bush's reference to Vietnam in a speech at the VFW national convention Wednesday. The WaPo's headline screamed "Bush compares Iraq to Vietnam". Maybe just a tad disingenuous, eh?

The New York Times approached it from a slightly more nuanced angle. Quoting from "historians", they found one who said:

“But there are a couple of further points that need weighing,” he added. “One is that the Khmer Rouge would never have come to power in the absence of the war in Vietnam — this dark force arose out of the circumstances of the war, was in a deep sense created by the war.”

Which naturally follows,

The same thing has happened in the Middle East today. Foreign occupation of Iraq has created far more terrorists than it has deterred.

Despite the State Department and most college professors how does anyone know with certainty the Iraq war has created more terrorists than it's deterred, as opposed to simply refocusing the people already trained for terrorism?

After all, we've been repeatedly told the Islamists under bin Laden were incapable of working with secular bad-boy Saddam, which forces us to ignore the fact many were Jihady-on-the-spot both before and after our invasion, with some even receiving training in Iraq before the fighting began. These same fighters who could never work with Saddam were later marshaled by our new best friend Izzat. So, most of these terrorists were seemingly already created. One might think we'd have seen a huge uptick in traditional Arab terror organizations like the Abu Nidal Group or Abu Abbas's Palestine Liberation Front as both leaders were formerly given refuge in Iraq. We haven't.

But let's humor the professor. He seems to be saying that anything bad that occurs after Hillary cuts-n-runs from Iraq will be entirely Bush's fault. Therefore, it's only fair to say that since Kennedy created the Khmer Rouge by going into Vietnam in the first place he was responsible for the millions of deaths that followed after Nixon saved America by cutting and running.