Cannon Fodders R Us

Senate candidate Richard Burr told the Rocky Mount Telegram this week that a benefit of the Iraqi War is that it "bought us time." Come again? "The president bought us 14 months where every terrorist has been focused on killing Americans in Iraq," Burr, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told the Telegram. "It bought us time ... time for the intelligence community to rebuild, time to put homeland security in place, time for first responders to be better trained. It enabled us enough time to focus efforts to build relationships with international intelligence services. Every day we get better." (Coverage in the Raleigh News & Observer.)

So the sacrifice of 900 American soldiers and who knows how many others was cover for a bungling federal bureauracy to get its act together? And we're supposed to applaud that?

Apparently, Burr's own campaign aides found that theory as dumb as we do, since they were scrambling almost immediately to "clarify" the candidate's views: "his statement was meant to suggest that giving terrorists a target outside the U.S. is a benefit of the war -- not a rationale for waging war."

Can't you just see the recruiting poster? "Join the Army ... and give terrorists a target outside the U.S." The Burr campaign's "clarification," if anything, is worse than the original statement!