The levels of blindness, sheer ignorance, hate, and general stupidity in this thread is honestly making me take a second look at who I respect around here.
A few things:
Direct blame on Bush is obviously misdirected. However, it represents a failure of his joint terrorism policies with the UK, it's certainly not some kind of validation. Assuming for a moment that this is definitely an Al-Qaeda attack (because I'm cynical, and wouldn't put it past some Anti-G8, anti-IMF folks to just blame some brown people to divert attention), then what we just witnessed is proof that the plan of "Drawing terrorists to Iraq" is not only stupid on paper, but futile in practice.
What is a strawman is the argument that Bush is being proactive about terrorism. If anything, it's the very definition of reactionary tactics, kneejerk ones at that. From day one, it has never dealt with the real issues of why we were attacked. To do so would require thought, and apparently giving any kind of context or rationale to 9/11 in New York, 3/11 in Madrid, or today in London is tantamount to defending the terrorists. Or at least, that's what any card-carrying conservative will tell you.
That's a shame, because the only way to stop terrorism is to understand what motivates someone to hijack a plane or strap on some dynamite. Bombing the ever-loving snot out of their home country will just confirm their beliefs and create more terrorists. How people like ToxicAdam can't grasp that seemingly elementary concept baffles me. You can't punish people who obviously aren't afraid of death with...death.
There is one absolute here: The United States was justified in waging war on the Taliban. They were knowingly safeguarding the man who orchestrated the WTC attack, thumbed their nose when we asked for him, and that was that. Iraq was and is a distraction. For all of our sources, informants, and overall intelligence, the one constant was that Osama and Saddam never, ever worked together. The fact that Saddam ran a secular government precluded any possibility of Osama working with him, and that stance has been backed by captured AQ members, as well as members of Saddam's regime.
Iraq's only real hand in any kind of global terrorism was rewarding families of Arab bombers in Israel. There are and were bigger fish to fry, but the almighty dollar is stopping us from going there. "Starting" with Iraq never made sense. Not from the perspective of using it as a core to stabilize the mideast, nor from perspective that removing Saddam would put terrorists on notice and/or drastically reduce their funding.
Also, I've never played this card on GAF, and I never plan to again. But I'm going to make one exception: Cockles, if I had the means, I'd ban your ass for a long while. Hate begets hate, and pulling out the sarcastic "Religion of peace, eh?" rhetoric does nothing to solve the problem, insults Muslims who don't pervert their religion to violent ends, and - to be blunt - is fucking disgusting.
I don't recall hearing "Stupid Christians" when Oklahoma City was bombed; when the Japanese subway system was gassed, the focus was on the act and the politics of the cult, not the cult themselves. What you fail to realize - or are just ignoring because it's easier to just make fun of Islam - is that religion isn't driving these people, politics is driving them; they're simply wrapping religion around their violence to avoid any internal struggle they have with what their subscribed religion has to say about killing innocent people. "Hey, if I interpret it this way, it's okay to blow shit up!"