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Salon's War Room:

Friday, Jan. 19, 2007: Previewing Tuesday night's State of the Union address, George W. Bush tells USA Today: "My point is going to be, what happens in Iraq matters to your security here at home."

Monday, Jan. 22, 2007: Sources tell ABC News that, in an "incident that has been dealt with at the highest levels of government," coalition forces discovered documents six months ago that suggest "insurgents reportedly tied to al-Qaida in Iraq considered using student visas to slip terrorists into the United States to orchestrate a new attack on American soil."

I realize that this is supposed to indicate that this administration is once again using terrorism for its own short-term political benefit. But let's think this through...

Let's grant for a moment that the reported plot is in fact real... If so, I cannot help but ask: Why would insurgents want to launch an attack in the United States? What would they hope to gain?

The goal of terrorism is to use violence to incite fear and provoke a response in order to achieve a larger political or social goal. So for the Iraqis described here, what would be that goal? An attack on US soil, one led by Iraqis, would undoubtedly provoke a swift, fierce, and overwhelming response from the United States. Rather than prompt an immediate withdrawal, it would undoubtedly drive us deeper into Iraq.

So why precisely is that something that Iraqi insurgents would want? Unless they have something significant to gain by us staying in Iraq, of course...

More to the point, the entire Bush Doctrine hinges on the idea that if we don't fight them "over there," they will come get us "over here." But doesn't this story show that this doctrine makes no sense? After all, the core of this story is that because we are fighting them over there, they want to come get us over here. These are, after all, members of "al-Qaida in Iraq," a group that simply did not exist prior to our invasion of that country.

Could these people possibly get any more incoherent?