# Posted 8:49 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

PREEMPTIVE CORRECTION: I put up the following post about an hour ago. Since then, four readers have already let me know that I made a very big mistake by assuming that Maureen Dowd quoted the President accurately. My compliments to Andrew Sullivan for exposing Dowd's dishonesty.

Yes, dishonesty. This time, she has really crossed the line from spin into fabrication. An apology is in order.

Anyhow, I hope you'll still read this post, since everything after the first paragraph defends the President from Dowd's false charges.

SAUDI EXPLOSION: In a surprisingly coherent column, Maureen Dowd takes the Administration to task for its arrogant dismissal of Al Qaeda's threat. While the President has been rather good about avoiding triumphalism, he should have known better than to say that

"That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. . . . They're not a problem anymore."

When you put things in such blunt terms, one major incident -- such as the Riyadh attacks -- can leave you looking like a fool. But when it comes to drawing broader lessons from the attacks, Dowd gets things completely wrong. She argues that

Buried in the rubble of Riyadh are some of the Bush administration's basic assumptions: that Al Qaeda was finished, that invading Iraq would bring regional stability and that a show of American superpower against Saddam would cow terrorists.

You'd think Dowd would've learned something from Bush about drawing premature conclusions. Apparently not.

Sad as the recent attacks were, they may actually indicate just how successful the war against Al Qaeda has been. If Al Qaeda is targeting Saudi Arabia, that means that it has begun to turn against a regime whose charade of ignorance was critical to Al Qaeda's global expansion. What that means is either that Bin Laden no longer has the ability to launch attacks outside the Gulf region or that he no longer expects the House of Saud to protect him or both.

As for regional stability, Dowd's criticism is rather short-sighted. Events in Jordan and Syria have begun to show that the fall of Saddam is steering things in the right direction.

Much more importatnly, the administration has argued that the fall of Saddam would begin a process of stabilization in the Middle East -- rather than marking its culmination, as Dowd implies. Moreover, if one takes the neo-conservatives at their word, this process of stabilization will entail direct confrontations with those dictatorships whose willing negligence was responsible for the rise of Al Qaeda.

In fact, the embarrassing failure of the Saudi government to provide extra security for Western residential compounds reinforces the neo-conservative argument that the United States cannot win the war on terrorism if it avoids confronting those who pretend to be its allies. As even some Saudis have begun to argue, nothing short of massive internal reforms can prevent Saudi Arabia from raising another generation of terrorists.

Now, one can argue that the neo-con stabilization project is nothing more than an ideological crusade that will bring chaos and destruction to the Middle East. However, the alternative to such a project is not to bury one's head in the Arabian sand, but rather to advocate an aggressive diplomatic effort to improve our 'allies' anti-terrorism efforts.

Finally, we come to Dowd's assertion that the invasion of Iraq has failed to intimidate existing terrorists. Frankly, I don't think anyone expected the invasion to provide Al Qaeda fanatics with a newfound measure of sanity. The much more important question is whether the invasion provoked an anti-American, pro-terrorist backlash or whether it has led potential Al Qaeda recruits to conlude that there are better ways of confronting American power.

So, what I'd like to know is who were the man responsible for this week's attacks in Riyadh? Hardened operatives or fresh recruits? Given the Saudi habit of covering Al Qaeda's tracks, we may never know. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion