Gary Ackerman Slams It

Gary Ackerman, Democrat from New York, just said that he's scratching his head that this testimony is not set into the context of international terrorism, maybe because IT HAS NOTHING TO DO with international terrorism.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is not a threat to us. Ackerman made that very clear in a contentious back-and-forth with General Petraeus. There is an attempt to elide the differences between a home-grown group that has taken on the name "Al Qaeda" within Iraq, and the actual group of Al Qaeda that has been operating independently for some time.

It's really impossible to suggest that Al Qaeda in Iraq is a major terrorist threat to the United States or even to Iraq - they're a mere fraction of the actual violence in the country. Yet the two groups we've heard most about in this testimony are Al Qaeda in Iraq and Iran.