Evenness of temper has never been one of John McCain’s signature virtues, but yesterday the Arizona Senator had a good excuse for loosing his cool. Henpecked by California’s Barbara Boxer about the poor polling of the Iraq war, of which he has been a resolute supporter, a visibly vexed McCain fired back that “a lot of us are not driven by polls. A lot of us are driven by principle. And a lot of us do what we think is right no matter what the polls say.”

Even apart from the deteriorating fortunes of his presidential campaign, McCain was right to be exasperated. By now, everyone who reads the daily newspapers is acquainted with the conventional wisdom: Iraq is a failure; the Bush administration’s “surge” plan to deploy 30,000 additional troops to Iraq is a bust; and immediate withdrawal is the only reasonable course. For the few who might have missed the memo, the Associated Press this week made much of an as-yet-unreleased “progress report” concluding, as the AP put it with discernible glee, “that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reform…” The AP didn’t quite say that all was lost, but the implication was clear enough.

Understandably, Democrats have been quick to capitalize on this latest grist for the anti-war mill. Harry Reid, sensing favorable political winds, picked this week to launch his opposition to the new military appropriations bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. As part of their strategy to block the bill, Democrats have harped on their newly discovered calculation that the war in Iraq is costing (cue: simulated outrage) $10 billon a month. “Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to protecting Americans from terrorism, improving security at our ports and airports, and increasing border security,” proclaimed Nancy Pelosi -- a strange statement indeed coming from the woman who has sought to criminalize the profiling of Muslim terror suspects by the FBI and the Customs Service and who has consistently voted against common-sense border-security measures like deputizing police to enforce federal immigration law. And just as neither Reid nor Pelosi waited for preliminary evidence before judging the surge a failure last month, the Democratic leadership is now trying to pass an amendment that would require troop withdrawals to begin in 120 days. For Reid et al., defeat can’t come soon enough.

But while retreat from Iraq has more or less been official Democratic Party policy for several years, it has now found support in Republican ranks. For their transparently poll-driven epiphany that the surge plan has failed, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar and New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici have drawn embarrassingly sympathetic press coverage of the kind seldom afforded Republicans. Now a new cohort of GOP defectors is rushing to join them on the side of the media angels, among them liberal Maine Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snow. Collins has even voiced support for a bill that would order U.S. troops to stop fighting combat missions. Bizarrely, she has defended the plan on the grounds that it would allow U.S. forces to better target al-Qaeda. In Collins’s judgment, U.S. troops apparently perform best when relegated to the sidelines. Such is what now passes for pragmatism in foreign policy.

What unites the anti-war critics on both sides of the political isle is their refusal to confront two stubborn facts. The first and most obvious is that, notwithstanding the countless obituaries that have been written in its name, the surge has not yet been given a chance to work. The last of the troops involved in the plan have arrived only in recent weeks and military commanders have been adamant that it needs to be continued until next spring for the results to become clear. At the very least, it would seem reasonable for legislators to wait until September, when General David Petraeus is scheduled to deliver his assessment of the strategy, before rushing to politically calculated conclusions. Moving up the deadline for the review may please anti-war dogmatists, but there is no reason to think that it qualifies as a credible evaluation of the military’s efforts -- particularly since the first detailed overview of the situation on the ground by the U.S. military shows some notable, if admittedly modest, improvements in security.

The second and similarly unacknowledged point is that a premature withdrawal would almost certainly produce a national-security disaster. As Iraq's foreign minister warned this week, an early exit would likely lead to a failed state. Whether Western-style democratic government was ever feasible in Iraq’s tribal and aggressively sectarian culture is a subject worthy of debate, but it should not be difficult to see that abandoning the country to al-Qaeda and its allies ill-serves American interests. Regrettably, war critics in both parties, so eager to seize John McCain’s “maverick” mantle by renouncing an unpopular war, can’t be bothered with such matters. Is it any wonder the real John McCain is frustrated?

These cut n run DUmmies don’t want anything but defeat for this country.

If they have one look at the map they’ll see that by withdrawing from Iraq, Iran and Syria will link up. The Sunnis will be slaughtered and that will bring in Saudi Arabia & the Gulf States, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey. Turkey will not only protect the Sunnis, but also will slaughter the Kurds to prevent them from grabbing the oil and claiming a Kurdish state in Northern Iraq.

The Iranian army, with Sadr’s help, will physically be on the Kuwaiti and Saudi borders!

That brings back to the DUmmies cut n runners trying NOT to send 500,000 US troops that we don’t have back where we are now.

I guess they’ll blame the President and look the other way while the USA suffers a humiliating defeat by terrorists. This will officially make the enablers terrorists in their own right.

World terrorism will skyrocket and nuke galore will be the terrorists’ favorite weapon and using it against us on US soil won’t be just a terrorists’ dream.

Here is where I stand

My letter to Congressman Lipinski (D) IL-3

March 26, 2007
Daniel Lipinski
Congressman – Illinois 3rd
1717 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Mr. Lipinksi:

The Congress of the United States has made me so angry that I’m writing this letter at 2AM on Monday morning 26 March.
I can not believe… my mind is still processing this… I can not believe that the House of Representatives have passed the atrocity that is HR1591. In your statement you write:

“In particular, I am glad that this bill provides $750 million to SCHIP, enabling children in Illinois to continue to receive quality health care. And the $400 million in funding for LIHEAP will help many of my constituents heat their homes throughout the winter."

What?!

You are GLAD that a bill that hands over Iraq to Al Qaida in 2008 contains more than $1,000,000,000 in pork for Illinois. Blood money, Congressman… the bloodiest. I am distraught that I’m represented in the Congress of the United States by someone who is GLAD that he was bought off by the extreme Left in Congress.
Congressman, do you know anything about the enemy we face? Do you? The ONLY people you should be (as your statement put it) “pressuring” is the vast array of Jihadis who are running wild all over the Earth. But no, you want to “pressure” the President.
No matter what the faults of President Bush are… and there are many… do you think he needs more pressure? And Pressure from craven politicians from Congress no less.

Why is no mention of our enemy to be found in your statement, Congressman? Or is the enemy the President?

The Sunni and Shiite Islamic Jihadis are absolutely determined to destroy us. They state this themselves as much as they can. They are not motivated by economics, technology, or some secular Marxist ideology.
They are devout followers of their religion. They believe in the core of their hearts and minds that they are working toward the betterment of mankind by destroying us. Their religious faith is what propels them and fills them with confidence.

Al Qaida and others have explicitly stated they are relying on Anti-American and Leftists domestic groups in the United States to emasculate the US. You , sir, are the tool they are relying on. You’re glad?
Are you glad that you’re validating their religious faith? YOU are contributing to their confidence that Allah will bring us down just as Allah brought down the Soviet Union.
Islam has been at war against the world since 622AD. Do you think they’re not going to wait ONE MORE YEAR for us to leave Iraq… just as the Soviet Union left Afghanistan and then fell out of existence.. and feel they have defeated a second Superpower?
This is going to cause an EXPLOSION in Islam. They are going to go into such a frenzy of religious revival, the blood will be flowing from all quarters of the Earth.

Congressman: You and your party will have contributed to untold destruction because you caused the US to back down. Back down to Jihadis! Jihadis who destroyed Persia… Jihadis who destroyed Byzantium and Constantinople. Jihadis who have been savagely brutalizing the Israelis.
Why Congressman..? Why? Please don’t tell me that you hate Republicans so much that you have to offer up the country as a sacrifice. I hope you’re not one of those people.

This is a map of Jihadi attacks around the world since 2003. 4,454 attacks with 28,957 dead.

Your vote has confirmed to the Jihadi that it is only a matter of time before the United States is completely neutralized and their effort at imposing Sharia upon the world is a certainty.
I think Bridgeview is in your district. Our little local hotbed of Islamic terror. I scanned through your press releases going back to 05 and I don’t see any messages about any involvement with that community. I infer from that and your enthusiastic support of this bill that perhaps you are not aware of the basics of Islam.

Congressman, I’m an Italian-American male, 32 years old now. Grew up in Bridgeport, went to High School in Oak Lawn.

I knew as much about Islam as anyone else… which is to say.. nothing. In the 90s, I was living in Hong Kong and an English ex-pat asked me what I thought about some strange Arab guy Bin Laden.

Tuff tuff.. I told him it’s absurd that anyone should give him any attention, he’s a media creation and that’s all. Later that year two US embassies were destroyed. I was determined to find out why I had dismiss the man… what did I not know that I should have known? That required learning about Islam.

Islam is more than the standard personal faith that most religions are. Islam is also a Totalitarian Military-Political System that will tolerate nothing other than itself. And will use any means (nothing is too extreme) to spread itself.

I have the misfortune of working in the Sears Tower… any out of place noise in that building causes me to go through my internal “have we been attacked” checklist. I do not feel any more secure with that travesty that you voted for

Please learn about Islam and undo the damage you and your party have done. Below my name I will leave you with some words about Islam that men far greater than myself have spoken

Sincerely,

Leftist, anti-War, ecoism worshipping pukes have abc, cbs, nbc, cnn, msnbc, cnbc, NPR, PBS, ALL major news papers/magazines/periodicals and the entire dim machine... including but not limited to the clinToon war machine... and “we” have Talk Radio, Free Republic and a handful of other sites where we gather to shape our destiny. This is not a debate society; it is CONSERVATIVE board for the discussion of CONSERVATIVE issues and paths to further our beliefs and implement them into law.

I am not full of myself... but I am filled up with disdain and contempt for anyone trying to make the Nation that I love... lose this War. The ONLY solution to the War in Iraq is VICTORY over al qaeda, and anyone that espouses the opposite point of view can do so on thousands of sites on the Net and hear their opinions spewed forth by flipping the power switch on any TV or Radio (on any of the above outlets). The vast majority of FReepers do NOT want to read some leftist/Rino position on the War... NOT when we have Military and Civilian FReepers in country telling us the truth as it is on the ground.

LLS

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