After reading
this excellent column
by Josh Marshall, I'm starting to think that maybe the flypaper theory makes sense after all.
It obviously doesn't work with terrorists, since it assumes that there is a fixed supply of them. I've always thought that the situation in Iraq more resembles the "rotting meat theory" whereby you put a chunk of rotting meat in your back room to attract the flies away from your living room.
However, there is a fixed supply of American soldiers.
Iraq has served an invaluable (to the terrorists) job of gathering them all in one place and pinning them down. This is making the regrouping of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and other regions much easier.
Very clever of those terrorists to trick the President into attacking Iraq, don't you think?