Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

Seems straightforward, right? Governor Palin told an assembly of troops about to be deployed to Iraq that they would be fighting "the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans" on September 11th, 2001. The Washington Post then notes that Iraq did not have any role in attacking us on September 11th, 2001 and that Palin's remarks are therefore nonsensical. But it turns out that her remarks do make sense if your name is Bill Kristol.

It makes no sense for Kornblut to claim that Palin is arguing here that Saddam Hussein's regime carried out 9/11--obviously Palin isn't saying that our soldiers are now going over to Iraq to fight Saddam's regime. Palin isn't linking Saddam to 9/11. She's linking al Qaeda in Iraq to al Qaeda.

Why does this remind me of McCain adviser John Goodman's plan to solve the problem of 45 million Americans without health coverage?

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. "So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

...According to Mr. Goodman, only people who are denied care are truly uninsured – everyone who gets care is effectively insured by some mechanism. "So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care," he said.

If you simply define reality in a way that suits you, you can make an argument that Albania is the real culprit behind the 9/11 attacks. Bill Kristol acknowledges that there can be some debate over the issue of culpability.

People can debate how intimate that connection is [ed note: between al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in Iraq], and how much of the fight in Iraq is now against al Qaeda in Iraq--but it's simply the case that Palin is not saying what Kornblut says she is, and that the Washington Post is, right now, leading its paper with a clear distortion of what Palin said.

Even if there are three or five Iraqis in Iraq who call themselves al-Qaeda, they still have nothing to do with the people that planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks. Even if you look at the people that were responsible for the 9/11 attacks you'll quickly realize that they came from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Egypt (for the hijackers) and Pakistan and Afghanistan (for the funding and training). Set aside for a moment that we didn't, other than Afghanistan, attack or retaliate against any of those countries, it should be obvious that al-Qaeda is a transnational organization. They have adherents in Iraq, and they have them in Australia and Canada, too.

Need I remind you that Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in Iraq were largely fabrications of military intelligence's imagination?