Atlanta Journal-Constitution Columnist Jay Bookman writes about the two of the Administration's false assertions : One is that the war on terror and the war in Iraq are the same. The second is that we are fighting each to protect America. Bookman says the Iraq war is not about terrorists. We agree. Remember this Dick Cheney statement?

"We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there," Vice President Dick Cheney said a week ago, "so we do not have to face them on the streets of our own cities."

False.

Such statements are simply false. Our men and women in uniform are not fighting for their lives against international terrorists in Iraq. They are not fighting the people who attacked us on Sept. 11, nor are they fighting allies of those people.

Instead, the guerrillas who are launching mortars at our military bases, attacking our troops on patrol or hiding booby traps on Iraqi highways are native Iraqis who are trying to evict American troops from their country. Despicable and cowardly as their tactics are, the Iraqi resistance is almost entirely Iraqi. They are not attacking us because they hate Americans. They are attacking us because they hate Americans who are occupying their country.

The import of fighting two wars at the same time is sobering:

It is almost never wise to start a second war when the outcome of the first is still unsettled because you are inevitably forced to divide resources. With more than 100,000 troops and many billions of dollars committed to Iraq for years to come; with our limited Arabic-language intelligence assets now targeted at the Iraqi resistance, not at al-Qaida and its network; and with international support for our war on terror eroded by our high-handed invasion, we have committed the classic mistake of military overreach.

The war on Iraq and the war on terror are two different struggles. Tackled separately, either would have taken us years to win. Tackling them simultaneously was tragic foolishness on a very large scale, no matter how much the president claims otherwise.