The war in which we are today engaged didn’t start on September 11, 2001. It actually started exactly a quarter of a century ago.

It just took us over two decades to realize it.

Osama bin Laden: “…we have found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration…”

May it be so for another four years.

In the Arab News:

Nelson Ascher makes a very compelling case. If I were in his situation, I’d do the same.

Nelson Ascher makes a very compelling case. If I were in his situation, I’d do the same.

Nelson Ascher makes a very compelling case. If I were in his situation, I’d do the same.

Claudia Rossett (who deserves a Pulitzer for her reporting on the Oil for Palaces and Weapons scandal) has some appropriately ungenerous words for Kofi Annan.

Alas, such dignity may come as cold comfort to the French, given that Mr. Annan did not actually deny that the Chinese, Russians and French had taken big payoffs from Saddam. Mr. Annan merely disputed that the Chinese, Russians and French would have delivered anything in return for the bribes. In other words, they may be corrupt, but at least they weren’t honest about it.

Sure, John-John, let’s give them nuclear fuel and “see what they do with it.”

The foreign fighters are wearing out their welcome.

Relations are deteriorating as local fighters negotiate to avoid a U.S.-led military offensive against Fallujah, while foreign fighters press to attack Americans and their Iraqi supporters. The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at least five foreign Arabs in recent weeks, according to witnesses.

“If the Arabs will not leave willingly, we will make them leave by force,” said Jamal Adnan, a taxi driver who left his house in Fallujah’s Shurta neighborhood a month ago after the house next door was bombed by U.S. aircraft targeting foreign insurgents…

…U.S. and Iraqi authorities together have insisted that if Fallujah is to avoid an all-out assault aimed at regaining control of the city, foreign fighters must be ejected. Several local leaders of the insurgency say they, too, want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.

“He is mentally deranged, has distorted the image of the resistance and defamed it. I believe his end is near,” Abu Abdalla Dulaimy, military commander of the First Army of Mohammad, said.

Here’s the president’s speech this morning in Pennsylvania, in which he said many things that he should have said in last Thursday’s “debate”:

There will be good days and there will be bad days in the war on terror, but every day we will show our resolve and we will do our duty. This nation is determined: we will stay in the fight until the fight is won. (Applause.)

My opponent agrees with all this