Original Contention: What iraq is now is a highly effective terrorist training ground - the sort of place that never existed before we created it.

howardtreesong's rebuttal: I view Afghanistan under the Taliban as having been a highly effective terrorist training ground.

I thought Paul's assertion was in the context of threats to the continental United States; in all events, it's aggressive -- it asserts that Iraq is conclusively and definitely different than any other possibly relevant training ground. If Afghanistan prior to 9/11 was even close, then his assertion isn't right.

Logical fallacies: false equivalency. The Taliban allowed terrorists to train within their borders, but they could not provide the environment that Iraq has today. Right now in Iraq the Pentagon reports that there were 800 attacks last month. Bob Woodward claims those figures are closer to 3,000.

Such an environment allows a terrorist to practice actual attacks, rather than simply shooting AK-47s in the mountains, drinking some tea, and toasting Death To America.

My recollection is that Al Quaeda tapes reflected substantially more organized training than that, including chemical weapons tests on dogs, explosives training, and tactical schools. You are correct that the Taliban did not necessarily support these financially, but that's not the key in my judgment: the Taliban permitted Osama, Ayman and others to operate freely, travel freely, and organize as they wished. Afghanistan as a sanctuary is the critical fact in my own judgment. I recall at least four or five of the 9/11 hijackers trained in Afghanistan, for example.

Additionally, the Taliban's Afhganistan did not offer significant incentives to become an international terrorist. Iraq on the other hand has experienced mass upheaval. Numerous Iraqis were killed directly by the United States' military actions. Many others were killed in the ensuing civil war, which is routinely blamed on the United States.

As such, many of these people will become polarized against the United States, and will likely turn to terrorism as a way of avenging the very real harms they have suffered.</i>

Well, let's break this down. Certainly you're right that innocent Iraqis killed by Americans are going to create significant resentment. But I think you're guessing when you claim that the consequent sectarian violence is necessarily blamed on the US. Iraqis aren't dumb. They recognize that Saddam attacked Iran and caused a bloody, vicious war that killed over a million Iraqis. He slaughtered (according to The End of Iraq) north of 300,000 Kurds. And his society was viciously authoritarian. Moreover, Sunnis and Shias both recognize that they're killing one another -- that the US may not be clamping down on violence, but it isn't the US that's actually committing it. I think your point here is substantially exaggerated with respect to the hostility of Iraqis to the US.

In Afghanistan, nobody had experienced real harms from the united states in many, many years, so only extremist radicals cared enough to fight. In iraq, almost everybody's life has been harmed in some way. It is natural to assume that many of them will fight back using standard asymmetric warfare, or what is currently known as terrorism.

Well, that's a fair point with respect to working to hurt American soldiers that are currently in Iraq. It's much less fair to assume that a material fraction of these folks will work to attack us here. Much more importantly, however, Iraq isn't now a state that supports terrorism. United States troops are actively and constantly working to attack insurgents, and are getting material intelligence to assist them in doing so. There's virtually no chance for terrorists in Iraq to set up training camps where they could, for example, do research and experimentation with chemical weapons, as they could in Afghanistan. What's the current life expectancy of a terrorist in Iraq? Much shorter, I would gather, than the life expectancy of a terrorist in pre-9/11 Afghanistan. There may be more attacks, but they are much much less severe and much much less sophisticated. And they are there, not here.

As such, I stand that your assertion that Afghanistan provided the same sort of terrorist training ground is grossly flawed.

It's not the same in every sense. I do contend that the level of danger to our homeland is not materially different, and in that sense (which is the context of Paul's assertion) they are the same. I believe I was correct.

It provided a terrorist training ground, but one without live ammo, live bombs,

If you believe there was not live ammo in Afghanistan, then you are sadly mistaken.

thousands of potential targets

This may be the disconnect. I'm not claiming that Afghanistan provided an easy forum to attack our soldiers; we weren't there, so of course they're different. But the discussion on Paul's LJ had to do with the danger to us here -- not to soldiers that were patrolling in a foreign country.

I'll also point out that Kurdistan is quite stable, with the exception of Kirkuk. And just to be clear, it has become obvious that we've made some gross errors in Iraq. But I do not think I'm overreraching even slightly to argue that Iraq today is no more dangerous to New York City than Afganistan was prior to 9/11.

I'll leave it to others to judge any bias they find in my analysis or conclusions.