Flutterby™! : War and Iraq

So by now y'all have undoubtedly seen that there are differing translations of the cut-and-paste audio tape from Emmanuel Gol Osama bin Laden. Here's the BBC translation. A Reuters article reports the early translation as:

"The fighting should be in the name of God only, not in the name of national ideologies, nor to seek victory for the ignorant governments that rule all Arab states, including Iraq," the statement said.

Others report similar translations from early U.S. online editions and broadcast versions. However, the MSNBC report spins it as:

U.S. officials say that while the speaker on the tape criticized Saddam, he stressed that the paramount battle for Muslims was with the United States and its allies and said Muslims were justified under Islamic law in defending Iraq from U.S. aggression.

Thus Ari Fleischer's statment that:

"If that is not an unholy partnership, I have not heard of one."

seems like a little too much of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" attitude that's gotten the U.S. into so many foreign policy quandaries to begin with. We know that we can't trust the print media on this topic, but it bothers me that my government is doing such a freakin' lousy awful job of justifying a war that I essentially believe in.

Speaking of things shaking my confidence, Charles Murtaugh had some sanity checking on disaster preparedness and a link to A Soldier's Viewpoint on Surviving Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Attacks. And Charles Olivier wonders about suffocation in your basement, which is a stupid place to be in the event of a gas attack anyway since I think most of these agents are heavier than air, someone does the math in his comments.

If the terrorist is someone who spreads fear through a population to acheive political ends, who are the real terrorists now? And whose fault is it that I have that question?