It's very obvious who is the enemy -- those who want to prevent us from fighting the terrorists.
"I've known Jack Murtha for a long time. I worked closely with him when I was Secretary of Defense and he chaired the defense appropriations subcommittee. I respect him, but he's dead wrong on this issue. His proposal is contrary to the national interest. And he draws exactly the wrong lessons from the examples of Beirut and Somalia. If you look back at the years before 9/11, you see case after case where terrorists hit America -- and America failed to hit back hard enough. In Beirut terrorists killed 241 of our servicemen. In Somalia we had the killing of 19 Americans. In both cases, the United States responded to the attacks by withdrawing our forces. But by doing so, we simply invited more danger, because the terrorists concluded that if they killed enough Americans, they could change American policy. And they did. So they continued to wage attacks against America and American interests. We had the bombing at the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, the murders at the Saudi National Guard training facility in Riyadh in 1995; the killings at Khobar Towers in 1996; the simultaneous bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; the bombing on the USS Cole in 2000; and, ultimately, the events of 9/11, when we lost 3,000 Americans here at home.
If we follow Congressman Murtha's advice and withdraw from Iraq the same way we withdrew from Beirut in 1983 and Somalia in 1993, we will simply validate the al Qaeda strategy and guarantee more terrorist attacks in the future. "
The enemy is radical Muslims--not that grand abstraction "terrorists". Nor is it the Democrats as political opponents. Why is it so impossible for people to speak about radical Islam? Those words are the big taboo words with this administration. I guess Cheney is afraid he might upset his good friend Jack Murtha whom he respects so much.