President Bush says pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq prematurely would put Americans at greater risk of another terrorist attack.

The president was speaking at a high school in Ohio on Thursday.

Mr. Bush again sought to more directly connect the war in Iraq with security at home, saying leaving prematurely would result in violence spilling beyond Baghdad and beyond Iraq's borders to threaten Americans.

"But I do believe it is risky to have an enemy that has attacked us before to not take the United States seriously for the long run," he said.

The president's statements imply most of the violence being carried out in Iraq is at the hands of terrorists, and more specifically by al-Qaeda, or at least by foreign fighters.

This is simply not true.

The bulk of insurgents in Iraq are Iraqi.

Al-Qaeda, it is common ground (with the exception of the U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney), had no presence in Iraq prior to the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The strength of al-Qaeda now is debatable.

Irrespective, for the Bush claims to have validity, foreign fighters of any form would be targeting Americans. In the event this was the case, Bush could rightly continue his mantra, "We are fighting the terrorists in Iraq, so we don't have to fight them at home."

However the small number of foreign fighters in Iraq is not targeting Americans, they are targeting Iraqis.

Four weeks ago, in an interview on the U.S. Defense Department's Pentagon Channel, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said, "Most of the foreign fighters as I read the intelligence, many of the foreign fighters are, in fact, suicide bombers and they come across the border from Syria, perhaps several dozen a month and they are responsible for a lot of these attacks. I think most of the suicide bombers are those who go into marketplaces and are killing other Iraqis to tell you the truth. I think most of these, the irony is foreign fighters are coming into Iraq and killing Iraqis."

Gates did go on to say, "Most of the attacks on our troops are the IEDs placed by al-Qaeda or the insurgency or the Jash al-Mahdi or snipers and that sort of thing. So the suicide bombers are mainly killing Iraqis."

So it begs the question, is al-Qaeda in Iraq made up of Iraqis? If this were so, a case could be made that they are fighting the U.S. occupation, rather than America itself. Either way it is difficult to decipher any credence in the U.S. president's stance.

Mr. Bush says al-Qaeda’s stated objective is to drive the United States out of Iraq in order to establish a safe haven. “They would need a safe haven from which to plot and plan and train to attack again,” he said.

“They have an objective and that is to spread their ideology throughout the Middle East,” he added. “Our objective is to deny them safe haven, to prevent al-Qaeda from being able to do in Iraq that which they did in Afghanistan, which is where they trained thousands of young men to come and to eventually kill innocent people.”

The statements imply, unless the president believes the al-Qaeda operation in Iraq is home-grown, that foreign fighters, principally al-Qaeda operatives, have swarmed to Iraq and set up operations there.

The Gates interview puts pay to that.

Also last week the Washington Post, in an article on the security situation in Baghdad said there had been 1,000 arrests since the new securty crackdown had begun. The arrests, according to the Post article, all involved Iraqis.

The article went on to say that the latest arrests had taken the number of prisoners held in two American-run prisoners in Iraq, to 18,000. (The figure was up from 10,000 a year ago).

Captain Phillip Valenti, public affairs officer for Task Force 134, the U.S. Military Police group in charge of prison operations, was quoted as saying "The intent is to detain individuals determined to be true threats to coalition forces, Iraqi security forces and stability in Iraq."

Every day there are reports of the capture or killing of terrorists in Iraq.

On Friday alone, in one press release distributed by the American Forces Press Service, it was reported that, "Coalition forces killed 10 terrorists and detained 42 in operations throughout Iraq today,"......"near Mahmudiyah, coalition forces detained eight suspected terrorists today,"......"Seven armed terrorists were killed after they fired upon coalition forces who were entering a building today. Forces on the scene detained 15 suspected terrorists who are allegedly tied to al-Qaeda in Iraq,"......"One armed terrorist was killed today when coalition forces entered a building in Baghdad to conduct an operation to disrupt the Baghdad car bomb network. Six suspected terrorists were detained,"......"Another operation in Baghdad netted two individuals with suspected ties to the Baghdad IED network. Near Mosul, coalition forces detained 10 suspected terrorists in two separate operations to disrupt the al-Qaeda network in northern Iraq."

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, Multinational Force Iraq spokesman was quoted in the American Forces Press Service article as saying, "Terrorists continue to endanger the Iraqi people and security forces by using explosives, and we will continue to disrupt their networks across the country."

In the Washington Post article however Capt. Valenti is quoted as saying that of the 18,000 detainees in the American-run prisons in Iraq, only 250 are foreign fighters. That's a little over 1 per cent. So where have all the "terrorists" come from? Or are they all Iraqis?

Is it a matter of America fighting terrorism in Iraq, or is it a matter of the Iraqi insurgency fighting the U.S. occupation? Or both?