There are 10 kinds of wrong in this article.

Saudi Arabia is building a fence on their border to keep illegals from crossing into their country from Iraq? A fence? The Saudi's see Iraq as a terrorist training ground?

On the 9/11 anniversary this week, the President spent a few moments talking about a memorial but spent most of his time on a very political speech about our progress in the war on terror. He mentioned "freedom" and "democracy" so many times, I thought it might be a drinking game.

But he never once mentioned democracy in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. The President made several references to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and now Lebanon (when did Lebanon become a US national interest?) but he never once mentioned where the 9/11 hijackers and Osama are actually from: Saudi Arabia.

It is also worth noting that while the Administration began to mention "Iran" in every public statement starting a few months ago, they never point out that Iran is Shia while the Iraqi "insurgents" (Cheney's "holdouts", "baathists" and "Republican Guard hardliners") are Sunni. Which is to say the Iran's influence in Iraq is more complex than they like to talk about. One could argue that Iran is helping the Shia majority protect itself from the Sunni terrorists - something we have been completely unable to do after four YEARS of trying.

In any case, it says a lot that the birthplace of the 9/11 hijackers is so afraid of afraid of terrorists coming from Iraq and destabilizing the region that they want to build a wall to protect themselves.

On top of that, we still dont have a clear and common understanding in this country of what "success" will look like in Iraq. (Notice that the generals are not talking about freedom and democracy anymore; their main goal is keeping Iraq from becoming a "failed state". I would say that was lowering the bar a bit.) And instead of bringing troops home for the Fall elections, it looks like we are heading the opposite way and sending more troops in. That can't be good.

After 9/11, the President and his cabinet (Wolfowitz, Card, Rumsfeld, Cheney) were searching for a reason to invade Iraq. I guess it only took them a few years to make one.

Growing Concern: Terrorist Havens In 'Failed States'

Instability in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon Raise Risk That U.S. Seeks to Address A Province's 'Execution Unit'

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN and PHILIP SHISHKIN

September 13, 2006

In April, Saudi Arabia disclosed plans for an unusual and hugely expensive project: a multibillion-dollar electrified fence along its 560-mile border with Iraq.

The move angered U.S. and Iraqi officials, but Saudi officials said Iraq's growing instability left them little choice. They said they were concerned about militants infiltrating from Iraq to carry out attacks aimed at either toppling the ruling family or inciting Saudi Arabia's restive Shiite minority to seek independence.

Concern about extremism seeping out of Iraq underscores a painful irony in the five-year-old war against terrorism: The U.S. and its allies now face the distinct possibility that the same kind of "failed state" that gave terrorists a haven when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan -- leading to Sept. 11 -- could be forming again, in more than one place.

Both Iraq and Lebanon are threatening to degenerate into states with weak central governments where extremists can thrive. Iraq already appears to serve as a kind of finishing school for young radicals seeking battlefield experience. In Lebanon, Hezbollah's war with Israel this summer both destabilized the country and enhanced the reputation of Hezbollah extremists, who in the past have demonstrated a desire to extend their reach beyond Lebanon's borders.

To make matters worse, Afghanistan itself now appears to be sliding backward so much that it could again become an international terror breeding ground.

...

This unwelcome picture is forcing changes in America's posture across the region. Most significantly, the U.S. in midsummer abandoned a plan that Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, had crafted that would have had the U.S. withdrawing some of its forces beginning this month.

Instead, the number of American forces in Iraq is increasing. In recent weeks the U.S. has shifted thousands of troops to Baghdad as part of an effort to secure the city, which means the U.S. has had to increase the overall number of troops in Iraq. Last week, the Pentagon said there were 145,000 troops, or 18,000 more than in late July and the highest level since the start of the year.

Senior military leaders say their top priority is to ensure that Iraq doesn't become a failed state. That has caused shifts in how U.S. forces operate on the ground. In places such as Tal Afar in northern Iraq and Tarmiyah, a Sunni stronghold northeast of Baghdad, U.S. military forces are reaching out to insurgent leaders in search of some sort of compromise that would get them to participate in the political process and move away from terror groups. As a result, American officers today are negotiating with Sunni leaders who only a couple of years earlier had been in jail.

U.S. officials acknowledge their main goal in Iraq now is to prevent it from turning into a place run by fundamentalists who export terrorism to the region. The administration's public comments also have shifted markedly in tone, from stressing the benefits of a democratic Iraq to citing the threats that failure in Iraq would pose to U.S. national security.