Sometimes, after a bad experience leaves you burned, you can go back years later and patch things up. You can step back from what happened in the past and look at the situation with a fresh perspective.

Such was not the case when I watched CNN this morning for the first time in forever. I wouldn’t normally bother tuning it in, but somebody had seen fit to put both TVs in the fitness center on the aforementioned channel. So for 15 minutes I trod on the treadmill and listened to reporters and guests popping on and off the morning show.

A British reporter said a lot of European capitals weren’t buying the assertion in Bush’s speech last night that the terrorists in Iraq are linked to other international terrorists and/or al Qaeda. Well, let me count the ways. Many of the Iraqi terrorists aren’t from Iraq. They are from Pakistan, Syria, Iran, or other countries in the region. Al Qaeda-linked terrorists were the guys who bombed the trains in Spain, convincing the Spaniards to vote for a presidential candidate who had promised to pull their troops out of Iraq. Spanish officials arrested 11 terrorist linked to al-Zarqawi earlier this month. Al-Zarqawi has publicly pledged himself to bin Laden. Plus, Fillipino terrorists have been killed fighting U.S. troops in Iraq. Sounds like a pretty strong “link” to me.

Then the pretty little reporterette introduces Sen. John McCain (RINO, Ariz.), saying that he has some advice for Bush concerning what he should do to boost poll numbers for the war in Iraq. CNN wants us to believe McCain has credible opinions about how to increase popularity when he couldn’t win his own party’s presidential nomination? Please.

And all of the lib dem pundits were going on and on about how Bush was trying to link 911 and Saddam/Iraq. I watched the speech. He didn’t do that. Bush was linking 911 and the beginning of the war on terror. The invasion of Iraq was very much a part of the war on terror. Say it with me: not the war on al-Qaeda or the war on Osama, but the war on terror. There were al-Qaeda members in Iraq before we invaded. They may or may not have been working with Saddam’s government to facilitate their training and tactics. Saddam was in defiance of U.N. edicts, not that the U.N. really cared. Kofi and co. were getting their palms greased through the corrupted oil for food program.

Oh, and Rush had a great analogy about the WMDs, which went something like this. Are you sure Natalee Holloway was ever really in Aruba? Aruba is a small country, if she was really there, don’t you think they would have found her by now? What if the people who said she was there were lying? How can so distinctive an individual go missing under so many watchful eyes? Are we sure she was there in the first place?

WMDs were in Iraq. Saddam used them against the Kurds and the Iranians. The U.N. inspectors were never able to fully account for his entire stockpile. The answer to where they went could be the same answer to the Natalee Holloway question. Perhaps someone had the foresight to take the query across the border.