  You knew it was going to happen. Vociferous urlLink supporters of the Bush Admin, under heavy fire recently over the prison abuse scandal, the burgeoning knowledge that perhaps it was systemic, not just a few "bad apples" and that Rumsfeld had approved broader interrogation techniques, are jumping all over this recent revelation that an I.E.D., that the military was trying to disarm but instead exploded, contained the nerve agent- Sarin. One errant shell, after 15 months worth of searching, and one we didn't even FIND, and the right-wingers are claiming it as proof of the WMD that we went in to save the world from. It would be funny if the tragic consequences of our invasion weren't so readily apparent. Safire is also trying to re-connect al Qaeda to Saddam's regime, using the recent influx of foreign terrorists and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's current reign of terror as proof he supported them. Yet it's been shown that there were no credible links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, they were ideological enemies and that it is only post-invasion that al-Qaeda and other terrorists have flooded into Iraq to meet the "Great Satan" head-on in a region they can have easy access to and blend in much more effectively.
Those of us who were opposed to this war and who are now critical of how the Bush Admin has implemented it so far are being called "defeatists" by Safire. Like many right-wingers, he's trying to impune the left's and the many other dissenter's patriotism because we dare be critical of this boondogle in Iraq.
I say it's a patriot that tries to save his country from his government! Our government is out of control and has embarked on an ill-advised and failing post-war strategy. We enacted regime change in Iraq and as has been said in the past, we need to enact regime change here in the US come November. 
