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You keep coming back to the election, and your majority, as if there's some validation in that. If you honestly believed that, you'd also point to the 2004 election as evidence the President did articulate the urgency of our involvement and call it a wash. After all, the President wasn't defeated in 2006. Many of his surrogates were, and many of them had problems of their own (corruption, lousy campaigns, fondness for teenage boys).

And if the 2006 elections were such a referendum on the war, what exactly was it the American people voted for? A party without a single suggestion on what to do? They voted for defeatist groaning? Oh, that's right... they voted for "change". Nothing specific. Nothing meaningful. Just a concept. That's terrific. We now have a "Visualize World Peace" bumper sticker for a wartime foreign policy.

Elections often have next to nothing to do with reality. In the most recent election, the economy rated as the third most important issue concerning voters. And an overwhelming majority of those voters strongly disapproved of the job the President and the Republican congress were doing. With robust job and wage growth, low unemployment, a record breaking stock market, falling gas prices, surging revenues and shrinking deficits, the American people believed their economy was struggling. Why? Because they're not paying attention. Or maybe it's who they're paying attention to that's the problem ("more Americans their news from ABC News than any other source", the horrifying refrain goes).

If the President's to do a better job communicating to the American people, he's going to have to start buying an hour of prime time every night on every major network to rebut the daily lashings he's getting from the elite news media.

As for your points about the Iraq war, the laundry list of concerns stands. Saddam Hussein was a terrorist. His country was home to two of the largest terrorist training camps in the middle east (Ansar al-Islam and Salman Pak). There is indisputable evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the Abu Nidal Organization (Nidal lived in Baghdad), the Arab Liberation Front, Hamas, Mujahedin-e-Khalq and the Palestinian Liberation Front (Abu Abbas also lived in Baghdad). Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda linked group, operated with impunity in the north while receiving financial and material support from Baghdad. Saddam Hussein gave safe haven (and, as we later found out, a monthly salary for ten years) to convicted 1993 World Trade Center bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin (who entered the US on an Iraq passport and struck the WTC on the second anniversary of the end of the Gulf War, February 26 1993). Saddam Hussein, using Islamic terrorists, plotted the truck- bombing mass murder of the entire Bush family in Kuwait City. He personally issued $25,000 "bonus" checks to the surviving families of Palestinian suicide bombers. He offered Osama bin Laden asylum in his country in 1999. He provided medical services, material support and safe haven to al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2003.

I repeat: the man was a terrorist. And in light of the 9/11 attacks, he was an immediate threat to the United States.

He was also a genocidal dictator who had used chemical weapons on thousands of Kurds, and continued producing such weapons according to three administrations, UNSCOM and every intelligence agency on the face of the planet (he was also given an 18 month head start during the "rush to war" to remove the weapons the world knew he had, as I stated above. Any guesses as to what was in those trucks crossing into Syria yet?)

And he was in violation of pretty much every condition of the 1991 cease-fire agreement.

And we'd just suffered the worst-ever attack on American soil.

And, just for fun, here's what Czech U.N. Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek said about the ringleader of those attacks:

"We can confirm, that during the next stay of Mr. Muhammad Atta in the Czech Republic, there was the contact with the official of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Al Ani, Ahmed Khalin Ibrahim Samir, who was on 22nd April 2001 expelled from the Czech Republic on the basis of activities which were not compatible with the diplomatic status.”

Again, I repeat: Saddam Hussein was a terrorist. Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat.

As to your second point, we didn't stand down because the Iraqis got blown up when they stood up. That's the bad guys doing that. They're doing it because they want us to split. Were you hoping to skip the war and go straight to the reconstruction? Me too. Didn't happen. The only difference between us is, I never expected it to. I always kind of figured the fanatical serial killers hell bent on the complete eradication of western civilization were going to start fighting back. I guess the other difference is, I don't expect, nor think it reasonable to the expect the Iraqis to stand and finish this. After all, if they're fighting fanatics hell bent on the destruction of western civilization, they are, in reality, fighting for western civilization. They didn't choose the battleground. Saddam and the Islamists did. But instead of bitching and moaning about their lack of progress from the comfort of our couches, maybe we should just say "thank you".

And, finally:

A President who doesn't understand how important it is to maintain a viable political majority is a danger to the cause of Liberty.

And I think a man who manages a war on the basis of popular opinion is the most dangerous threat to Liberty imaginable. Perhaps if the Republicans had fought harder for the war they supported and authorized, they'd have countered the media's disgraceful coverage enough to maintain their majority.