Absolutely Fabulous

I'm not a regular Salon reader, but the Salon blog World O' Crap has delivered a holiday present to us which is better than most of the stuff I found under my Christmas tree this year. I had originally set out to write a fisking of Ben Shapiro's delusional Town Hall piece today titled, "Why the war in Iraq is an integral part of the war on terror." Obviously I don't have to provide you with more than the title to see that the boy has likely been sniffing some heavy duty adhesives and solvents, but his premise is so far out of our normal dimensions of existence that it deserved a closer look.

First he begins by hoisting up the claim that bin Laden's recent adoption of al Zarqawi as his new poster child in Iraq was proof of why the two are connected.

Bush cited terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence that the Iraq war and the war on terror were inextricably joined. "If Zarqawi and his associates were not busy fighting American forces, does Sen. Kerry think he would be leading a productive and useful life? Of course not. And that is why Iraq is no diversion."

This week, the evidence came pouring in for President Bush's position. Bin Laden sent in his latest audiotape to an Islamist Web site. On the tape, the al-Qaeda leader told fellow Muslims that they would be committing a "grave sin" if they did not wage jihad against U.S. forces and the government in Iraq. He labeled as "infidels" any Iraqis who participated in the upcoming Jan. 30 Iraqi election. He explained that al-Qaeda was spending at least $275,000 each week in Iraq. And he appointed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi his proxy in Iraq.

Never mind, for a moment, the fact that up until recently bin Laden expressed disdain, if not outright hatred for al Zarqawi, and is clearly only now endorsing him as a useful tool against America. Shapiro then goes on into some rambling comparison of terrorists to metal filings in a sand box and shows how it's actually a Good Thing that we destabilized Iraq so badly that it became a hot spot for terrorists looking for a shooting gallery where they could readily kill Americans.

The war in Iraq has helped solve another problem as well. Islamist terrorism composes a network spanning the globe. The largest question in dealing with such a network is how to draw out the terrorists from the general population. Islamist terrorists are like iron filings in a sandbox; there is no sieve in the world capable of separating the malignant from the benign. The only way to draw the filings from the sandbox is by using a large magnet: You let the filings come to you.

That's the situation in Iraq. Terrorists from all over the Middle East and the world are seeping into Iraq, hot and heavy to do battle with coalition forces. For months, we've heard constant reports of terrorists from Iran and Syria crossing the Iraqi border.

Excuse me, Ben, but that is exactly the reason we've been telling you all along that this war was a huge mistake. Thinking that America's rolling out the red carpet for armed terrorists to kill our troops is... well, frankly I don't have any words to describe that.

Thankfully, World O' Crap does:

And what do iron filings do if you put them in water? Yes, they sink. And what also sinks in water?

Townhaller #3: Uh, rocks!
Townhaller #1: Magnets!
Townhaller #2: Uh, gra-- gravy!
Townhaller #3: Uh, churches! Churches!
Townhaller #2: Lead! Lead!
Mike Adams: The ACLU.
Crowd: Oooh.
Ben Shapiro: Exactly. So, logically ...?
Townhaller #1: If ... iron filings ... weigh the same as the ACLU, ... they're made of magnets.
Ben: And therefore?
Townhaller #2: They're terrorists!!
Crowd: Bomb the terrorists! Bomb the terrorists!
Iron filings: It's a fair cop.

But back to Ben:

That's the situation in Iraq. Terrorists from all over the Middle East and the world are seeping into Iraq, hot and heavy to do battle with coalition forces.

And eventually all the terrorists (and evil doers, and general nogoodniks) in the world will have been magnetically drawn to Iraq, and we can just nuke the country and be done with the War on Terror. Mission Accomplished!

This blog entry isn't just about Shapiro. It's a roundup of Town Hall columns by the Toxic Twig (Coulter), Thomas Sowell explaining why gay marriage will be the death of us all, Bill O'Reilly's Christmas wars and more. I can't reccomend this post highly enough. Read it and you'll get a good smile to start off your New Years Eve.