The Bush administration and Pentagon constantly claim that we are fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq, but is that accurate?

Nine out of 10 times, when it names a foe it faces, the U.S. military names the group called al-Qaida in Iraq. President Bush says Iraq may become an al-Qaida base to "launch new attacks on America." The U.S. ambassador here suggested this week al-Qaida might "assume real power" in Iraq if U.S. forces withdraw.

"Such speculation is unrealistic," Amer Hassan al-Fayadh, Baghdad University political science dean, said of the U.S. statements.

Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, strong Kurdish ethnic minority, secularist Sunni Muslims and others would suppress any real power bid by the fringe Sunni religious extremists of al-Qaida, al-Fayadh said.

"The people who are fighting al-Qaida in Iraq are the Sunnis themselves," he noted.

Since Iraqis rose up against the U.S. occupation in 2003, the insurgency has spawned a long roster of militant groups — the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Islamic Army in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, Mujahedeen Army, the Mahdi Army, among others — drawing on loyalists of the ousted, Sunni-dominated Baathist regime, other nationalists, Islamists, tribal groups and militant Shiites.

Some 30 groups now claim responsibility for attacks against U.S. and government targets, said Ben Venzke, head of the Virginia-based IntelCenter, which tracks such statements for the U.S. government.

Despite this proliferation of enemies, the U.S. command's news releases on American operations focus overwhelmingly on al-Qaida.

During the first half of May, those releases mentioned al-Qaida 51 times, against just five mentions of other groups. When other groups tangle with U.S. forces, they're often described as "al-Qaida-linked," mainly those in the Islamic State of Iraq, an alliance that is dominated by the terror network. If not, they're tagged "criminals," "secret cell networks," or with similar nonspecific names.

Now if you are confused by this information I would like to welcome you to the fact based reality that we call the liberal blogisphere. Get comfortable and allow me to explain.

The only way to keep Americans from becoming squeamish and demanding our immediate withdrawal from Iraq is to claim that we are fighting the enemy that blew up the twin towers on 9-11. The truth of course is that we are killing Iraqi students, shopkeepers, taxi drivers, carpenters, clerics, fathers, mothers, and their children. They are either fighting us to get us out of their country, or they are innocent bystanders killed by careless carpet bombing or sporadic gunfire from both sides.

And then of course there are those being killed by the Iraqis themselves, through car bombings, and kidnappings, and ethnic cleansing. This is something that was not happening during the reign of Saddam Hussein. He was a cold blooded killer himself, but he would have had to work 24 hours a day to kill as many Iraqis per day as are now dying since he was removed from power.

So the truth is that we have no enemy in Iraq, and therefore no reason to be there. Al-Qaeda is in Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, and Spain, and probably everyplace else in the world in larger number then the ones they maintain in Iraq. But we focus on Iraq because that, my friends, is where the oil is. And that was what this war was about all along.