Tell me again how Iraq helps against Al Qaeda

This war in Iraq has been a disaster on so many fronts, but what it's done for Al Qaeda, and violent groups in general, is unconscionable.

In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said al-Qaida's command base in Pakistan increasingly is being funded by cash from Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.....

Al-Qaida in Iraq has drawn increasingly large contributions from elsewhere in the Muslim world — largely because the fight against U.S. forces has mobilized Middle East donors, officials said.

The Iraq invasion has helped terrorist recruiting, enhanced their fundraising, and raised their profile in the broader Arab world.

Al Qaeda was something of a fringe group before George Bush decided to invade Iraq. Now, you will find T-shirts with Bin Laden's face in street markets from Mogadishu to Indonesia.

Also in this article, it's good to know that Bin Laden wasn't a top priority from 2002 to 2006....

....an aggressive effort launched last year to intensify pressure on bin Laden and his top deputies.....

The officials were charged with reinvigorating a search that had atrophied when some intelligence assets and special-forces teams were pulled out of Afghanistan in 2002 to prepare for war with Iraq.....

President Bush is given detailed presentations on the hunt's progress every two to four months, in addition to routine counterterrorism briefings, intelligence officials said.

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