It would appear that figuring out what "al-Qaida" really is, is going to play a large part in the ongoing political debate in this country. Here's what I mean:Everyone knows that al-Qaida -- meaning the group headed by Osama bin Laden that was headquartered in Afghanistan -- was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Recently there was a report from U.S. intelligence agencies that said that "al-Qaida" had reorganized and retooled itself since the invasion of Afghanistan such that it was almost back to its pre-Sept. 11 strength.

This led the Associated Press, , in one story about the report, to observe:

"The findings could bolster the president's hand at a moment when support on Capitol Hill for the war is eroding and the administration is struggling to defend its decision for a military buildup in Iraq."

This is because of quotations like this from Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, in the same AP story:

"The number one enemy in Iraq is al-Qaida. Al-Qaida continues to be the chief organizer of mayhem within Iraq, the chief organization for killing innocent Iraqis."But is the al-Qaida of Sept. 11, 2001 and the group of fighters in Iraq who call themselves "al-Qaida in Iraq" the same thing? Many say no, that there is no evidence that the al-Qaida of Sept. 11 had anything to do with Iraq, and that al-Qaida in Iraq arose sometime after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces.

Clearly, the Bush administration has an interest in people believing that the four years of bloodshed in Iraq can be laid at the feet of a generic "al-Qaida" that runs in an unbroken line back to Sept. 11, 2001.

Otherwise, a report that al-Qaida is back to Sept.10, 2001 strength after six years in which the country has spent hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention thousands of lives, would not "bolster the president's hand" but quite the reverse.

There's no indication why the AP writer chose to take the argument that the Sept. 11 al-Qaida and the dominant sources of violence in Iraq are one and the same as an established fact -- that's the only way the "bolster the president's hand" quote makes any sense -- but there is a lot of commentary available in print and on the internet that hotly disputes any such notion.

It all proves once again there's no substitute for critical thinking -- and critical reading.