ABC News' Pierre Thomas reveals that Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently testified before Congress that Coalition forces captured documents in Iraq about six months ago that showed that al-Qaida in Iraq was planning a major attack in the United States:

Mimicking the hijackers who executed the Sept. 11 attacks, insurgents reportedly tied to al Qaeda in Iraq considered using student visas to slip terrorists into the United States to orchestrate a new attack on American soil.

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently testified that documents captured by coalition forces during a raid of a safe house believed to house Iraqi members of al Qaeda six months ago "revealed [AQI] was planning terrorist operations in the U.S."

I'd love to find out when that testimony was.

One of the questions asked of the Administration before the Iraq War was if the war would weaken our efforts in the War on Terror. The answer was, and is, that it is better to fight terrorists with our forces on their territory than ours. If Iraq attracted terrorists, so be it. We'll deal with them there. What has happened, unfortunately, is that we have been restricted in attacking and destroying those terrorists. Ultimately, it's the Administration's fault for allowing diplomats and the State Department to run the post-Saddam Iraq, and for caving into the critics of the war by worrying more about the 'human rights' of the terrorists than about killing them. We should have worked on winning "the hearts and minds" of Iraqis after we destroyed the enemy, not used it as the main driving force behind our invasion. And after the success of the initial invasion, when the terrorists and insurgents raised their ugly heads, we should have crushed them - not let the fledgling Iraqi Government (and people like Paul Bremer) negotiate with them.

Oh, and as to the canard that the Iraq War has made it more likely that we will be attacked at home. Richard Clarke, of all people, inadvertently puts the lie to this in the following quote:

The hunt for suspects continues, however, and some fear that al Qaeda recruits in Iraq could be easily redirected. "Anyone willing to go to Iraq to fight American troops is probably willing to try to come to the United States," Clarke said.

Personally, I'd rather have the terrorists stop in Iraq first so that we can kill them than go directly to the United States, where they can be defended by the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Arlen Specter and Lindsay Graham.