"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
This is the "top down" strategy that didn't work. General Petraeus is utilizing a "bottom up" strategy (because "it works"). Don't these people in Washington keep themselves current on what is really happening in the Iraq Campaign?
Oh my are the Dems changing the GOAL POSTS like they have been screaming President Bush has done. LOL. LOL !!!!!
Some one needs to stand up on both the House and Senate floor and after being recognized ask two simple questions of the Dems-”Is having something to hang around this president’s neck for the partisan political means of strengthening your party’s quest for power more important than the winning of the war? If your answer is yes, why should not every American consider your actions treason of the highest degree?”
The only reasonable interpretation of this move is that this is the Democrats' latest attempt to telegraph to America's enemies exactly what those enemies must do in order to ensure America's defeat. The message is: sabotage all political efforts at reconciliation and nation building, and you will be rewarded with an American defeat. The effect of this measure would clearly be to make those 'political advances' impossible, and not to encourage them.
Before this, they were trying desperately to tell Iran, al Quaeda, various Sunni and Shiite insurgents, and their entire support infrastructure, "just hold on until this date, six months from now, and we will force the American troops to come home in defeat - then Iraq is yours to do with as you please".
The Democrats tried - how many times? three or four dozen times? - to get some flavor of that "defeat America" strategy to pass, but it always came up short. But, as we've seen in the past, the Commies are like the Energizer Bunny - they keep coming and coming and coming, and will do anything possible to sneak through their ugly agenda. They've repackaged it, camouflaged it, and poll-tested it to make it more palatable to the uninformed while keeping the pressure on to show solidarity with their revolutionary cadres, and underneath it all it's the same abomination with the same old anti-American goal...