[Sabertooth]

Moreover, I see relatively little value in further pandering to the ridiculous "where are the WMD's" crowd simply because they are professional, permanent malcontents.

It's pandering when you appease your opponents, not when you trump their argument.

What we must do is to stay on target, on message, and continue being the adults at the world playground of children states.

The message is that we were in Iraq for a lot more reasons than WMDs. We're off it now, giving the Left what little opening they have to carp about the WoT.

The entire adults/children/malcontents model is specious. There are a lot of ill-informed voters who make their decisions based on soundbites, and there always will be. They are the ones who need to be informed about Saddam's torture state. We need the embeds on the ground in Iraq now, bringing back the vivid video evidence and the inescapable comparisions with Nazism.

The common understanding should be "opposing the war = favoring torture."

Then let the Left and the media chatter to themselves in the corner.

[Southack]

"We're off it now, giving the Left what little opening they have to carp about the WoT."

The only possible way that such carping can work for the Left is if Iraq turns into a daily body-count morass for months on end (in which case, yes, we would need to reinforce the message that opposing the War equals supporting totalitarian torture).

But frankly, I don't see it happening. Oh sure, a few fainthearts are going to extrapolate from a couple of copter shootdowns that this is Vietnam Part Deux, but the insurgency on the ground in Iraq is pathetic and weak, overall. They can snipe in a few areas. They can setup IED's on our well-traveled routes (which even then opens them up to our counter-ambushes). They can loft up a few mortar rounds and fire off some RPG's, and they can run the occassional suicide bomber (sometimes in cars). They've got a few hundred shoulder-fired AA missiles, most of which aren't effective on any but our most vulnerable aircraft.

They can't mass. They have no supply routes. They don't control the currency. They can't even convince their own population to participate in even a regional, much less a national work strike. They can't stop traffic in either the cities or remote rural areas. More importantly, they have no overt national sponsor. Their old currency is worthless, replaced by all new bills, and their existing stocks of ammo aren't infinite...thus their ability to continue any meaningful resistence is dubious.

To put this in context, Israel is losing more soldiers and civilians each week on its home turf than we are losing American soldiers over in Iraq.

Look at Afghanistan. We're doing so well there (no "Arab rage" no "angry street") that the Left will hardly breath a word about it.

So to me, Iraq is just a matter of time. The resistence there is considerably less than what we faced in occupying Germany after WW2 was won, and the carping in the press is doomed to little more than short-term impact.