The Discerning Texan

Labels: Bush Derangement Syndrome, Iran, John Edwards, Nutroots, The Left

Speaking for myself, I'm not looking at "a narrow slice of it" but only at its first and most important consequence: The conferring of instant open-ended legal residency and employment rights on just about anybody on the planet who wants them under a visa that, while technically "probationary", will in practice be all anybody ever needs because (aside from its other benefits) it removes any possibility of deportation. After that's gone into effect, the "narrow slices" and "little aspects" in Section 739(f) won't matter.

Any "background check" will be perfunctory and conducted by an agency manifestly unable to cope with its present caseload. When I saw the President a few months ago, he touched en passant on the sclerosis of government departments. I find it hard to believe that as the chief of state he's not aware that this particular state agency is in no position to "solve this problem". If he is really unaware, I suggest he visit those CIS processing centers where, due to shortage of space, the adjudicators have to store files at home or in the trunks of their cars. That's one reason why, for example, an agency which demands original documents manages to lose so many of them.

I respect the President and I appreciate that his sincerity on this issue has been obvious for his entire political career. But I don't think he should impugn the good faith of those who, equally sincerely, disagree - not on "narrow slices" but on the central proposition: that drive-thru legalization for millions of people subject to desultory background checks by an agency without the resources to conduct them is not "what's right for America".

Labels: Illegal Immigration, President Bush, Republican

Labels: Cartoons, Media Bias, Media War, NY Times

Labels: Communism, Hugo Chavez, Thought Police, Venezuela

Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army apparently masterminded the kidnapping of five Britons in Iraq. The abductions likely came as retribution for the death of Sadr's lieutenant in a gunfight earlier this month between the Mahdis and the British [...]

[...] If this is true, it challenges the status of Sadr as a politician to a degree not seen since his capitulation in Najaf in 2004. It also highlights the problem of Sadr's influence on the Interior Ministry, controlled by one of his allies and reportedly infiltrated to a high degree by Mahdis and other Shi'ite militias. The kidnapping took place at a government building, the first time Westerners have been abducted from such a facility.

The big worry is that the Mahdis will sell the hostages to another group, perhaps even al-Qaeda. The commandos of the SAS have been put on alert in case they are needed for rescue and extraction. In the meantime, the UK and the US have to pressure the Maliki government to either take care of Sadr or to stand by while we do so. The raids on Sadr City this week sent a message, but as we have seen with Sadr in the past, that message needs to be personal -- and final, this time.

Labels: al-Sadr, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Fascism, War strategy

Labels: 2008 Presidential Race, Fred Thompson

Labels: "Consensus" Science, Global Warming Hysteria

Labels: Iran, Iraq, Islamic Fascism, Nuclear, State Department Sabotage, Terrorism, Treachery

Labels: Democrat, Government Spending, National Debt, Socialism, The Left

An American member of Al Qaeda warned President Bush on Tuesday to end U.S. involvement in all Muslim lands or face an attack worse than the Sept. 11 suicide assault, according to a new videotape. Wearing a white robe and a turban, Adam Yehiye Gadahn, who also goes by the name Azzam al-Amriki, said Al Qaeda would not negotiate on its demands.

"Your failure to heed our demands ... means that you and your people will ... experience things which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11th, Afghanistan and Iraq and Virginia Tech," he said in the seven-minute video.

Labels: Al Qaeda, Democrat Sabotage, Islam, Islamic Fascism, Terrorism

Labels: "Consensus" Science, Global Warming Hysteria, The Left

Labels: Bill Clinton, Corruption, Justice Department

Labels: Communism, Free Speech, Hugo Chavez, Jimmy Carter, The Left, Thought Police

Labels: Science, The Opposite Sex

Labels: Communism, NGOs, The Left

Labels: Cartoons, Illegal Immigration, Memorial Day

Labels: Media Bias, Media War, Memorial Day, Military Families, The Left

Labels: al-Sadr, Iraq

Labels: Border Protection, Illegal Immigration

Labels: 2008 Presidential Race, Defeatocrats, Memorial Day

Labels: Corruption, Democrat, John Murtha

Using water cannon, police dispersed thousands of stone-throwing protesters outside Venezuela's telecom authority, which ordered the station off the air.

Labels: Hugo Chavez, Latin America, The Left, Venezuela

Labels: Memorial Day, Military, Military Families

Labels: America War Support, Cartoons, Hearts and Minds, Media Bias, Media War, The Left, War Successes

Labels: Border Protection, Illegal Immigration

Labels: India, Iraq

Everyone wants to sound reasonable and be the chap who charts the middle course between the Scylla of open borders and the Charybdis of mass deportation. But these are not equivalent dangers. The Charybdis of mass deportation is a mythical monster: It does not exist. It will never exist. No politician is arguing for it, and no U.S. agency is capable of accomplishing it. Indeed, even non-mass deportation does not exist. Go on, try it. Go to your local immigration office and say: Hello, boys. Here I am. I'm an illegal immigrant, got no right to be here, been breaking the law for 20 years, but I've seen the light and I want you to deport me back to Mexico, Yemen, you name it. The immigration guys will say: Leave your name and address and we'll get back to you in a decade or three.

But the Scylla of open borders does exist. It's the reality of the situation. What else would you call it when a population the size of Belgium's (the lowball estimate) or Australia's (the upper end) moves onto your land? And with the connivance of multiple state agencies, not to mention those municipalities that proudly declare themselves to be "sanctuary cities?"

In life's rich tapestry, there are bound to be questions to which there are no good answers -- that Missouri paternity suit is one of them. That's how advocates of the "bipartisan compromise" prefer to talk about immigration: difficult business, no ideal solution, and only extremists would pursue such theoretical perfection as "mass deportation."

OK. But whatever happened to non-mass deportation? Not long after Sept. 11 I chanced to be heading north on I-87 between Plattsburgh and Montreal. At the border crossing from Champlain, N.Y., to Lacolle, Quebec, I noticed that what appeared to be a mini-refugee camp had sprung up. It's not often that you see teeming hordes lining up to get into Canada, so I asked the immigration officer what was going on. He rolled his eyes and did a bit of boy-those-crazy-Yanks stuff and then explained that most of the guys waiting to get in were from Pakistan. In the wake of 9/11, the authorities had rounded up various persons of interest in the New York City area. Whether or not they were terrorists, they'd certainly violated immigration law, overstaying visas and so forth. And as a result, many other illegal immigrants from Muslim countries had concluded it was time to liquidate their assets and break for the border. In other words, the roundup of a relatively small number of persons sent thousands more fleeing to Canada. As that Missouri grandma would say, don't look on it as losing a Pakistani illegal but as gaining a Canadian neighbor.

So the question is: Why is enforcement of U.S. immigration somewhere between minimal and nonexistent? By some estimates, half of all illegals have arrived on George W. Bush's watch -- i.e., they broke into a nation at war with borders supposedly on permanent "orange" alert.

To return to the 72-virgin jackpot, even the looniest jihad-inciting imam understands that human nature responds to incentive, to the tradeoff between obligation and reward. But the immigration bill is all reward and no obligations. The only clause that matters is the first one: the mandatory open-ended probationary legal status the bill will confer the moment it's passed. All the rest -- the enforcement provisions on border agents and security fences that will supposedly "trigger" Z-visas and then green cards -- is nonsense, most of which will never happen. If you're "undocumented," you don't care about whether your Z-visa leads to citizenship 15 years from now: What counts is crossing the line from illegal to legal, which in this bill happens first, happens instantly and happens (to all intents and purposes) irreversibly. All the rest is Beltway kabuki.

Labels: Border Protection, Illegal Immigration, Mark Steyn

At the outset I stipulated that the weapons with which we are fighting World War IV are not all military—that they also include economic, diplomatic, and other nonmilitary instruments of power. In exerting pressure for reform on countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, these nonmilitary instruments are the right ones to use. But it should be clear by now to any observer not in denial that Iran is not such a country. As we know from Iran’s defiance of the Security Council and the IAEA even while the United States has been warning Ahmadinejad that “all options” remain on the table, ultimatums and threats of force can no more stop him than negotiations and sanctions have managed to do. Like them, all they accomplish is to buy him more time.

In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force—any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938.

Since a ground invasion of Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done, if it is to be done at all, by a campaign of air strikes. Furthermore, because Iran’s nuclear facilities are dispersed, and because some of them are underground, many sorties and bunker-busting munitions would be required. And because such a campaign is beyond the capabilities of Israel, and the will, let alone the courage, of any of our other allies, it could be carried out only by the United States. Even then, we would probably be unable to get at all the underground facilities, which means that, if Iran were still intent on going nuclear, it would not have to start over again from scratch. But a bombing campaign would without question set back its nuclear program for years to come, and might even lead to the overthrow of the mullahs.

The opponents of bombing—not just the usual suspects but many both here and in Israel who have no illusions about the nature and intentions and potential capabilities of the Iranian regime—disagree that it might end in the overthrow of the mullocracy. On the contrary, they are certain that all Iranians, even the democratic dissidents, would be impelled to rally around the flag. And this is only one of the worst-case scenarios they envisage. To wit: Iran would retaliate by increasing the trouble it is already making for us in Iraq. It would attack Israel with missiles armed with non-nuclear warheads but possibly containing biological and/or chemical weapons. There would be a vast increase in the price of oil, with catastrophic consequences for every economy in the world, very much including our own. The worldwide outcry against the inevitable civilian casualties would make the anti-Americanism of today look like a love-fest.

I readily admit that it would be foolish to discount any or all of these scenarios. Each of them is, alas, only too plausible. Nevertheless, there is a good response to them, and it is the one given by John McCain. The only thing worse than bombing Iran, McCain has declared, is allowing Iran to get the bomb.

And yet those of us who agree with McCain are left with the question of whether there is still time. If we believe the Iranians, the answer is no. In early April, at Iran’s Nuclear Day festivities, Ahmadinejad announced that the point of no return in the nuclearization process had been reached. If this is true, it means that Iran is only a small step away from producing nuclear weapons. But even supposing that Ahmadinejad is bluffing, in order to convince the world that it is already too late to stop him, how long will it take before he actually turns out to have a winning hand?

If we believe the CIA, perhaps as much as ten years. But CIA estimates have so often been wrong that they are hardly more credible than the boasts of Ahmadinejad. Other estimates by other experts fall within the range of a few months to six years. Which is to say that no one really knows. And because no one really knows, the only prudent—indeed, the only responsible—course is to assume that Ahmadinejad may not be bluffing, or may only be exaggerating a bit, and to strike at him as soon as it is logistically possible.

Labels: Iran, Islamic Fascism, Military Strategy, Nuclear, Terrorism

Labels: al-Sadr, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Fascism

I remember when I was a kid; one thing was clear to me. The more I learned about the rest of the world, the luckier I felt just having been born in America. The more I learned about America, the more I appreciated what those who came before us built; and how exceptional they were.

Not that there aren’t other great places to live, but America is unique. It’s not just that we are the freest and most prosperous county the world has ever seen. America has also freed more people than any other nation in history.

A lot of people have done their part to see that we are blessed with the advantages we enjoy — from hardworking pioneer mothers to the Framers of the Constitution. Memorial Day is coming up, though, and I’m thinking more about American soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice — those who died to protect our way of life and make the world safe for democracy.

There are some people, though, who don’t think that’s such a good idea. Some people even want to use Memorial Day to protest our military’s presence in Iraq. The irony is that their right to protest was paid for by people willing to risk everything to keep the forces of tyranny at bay — here as well as Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Korea, Burma, Vietnam, the Philippines, and dozens of other countries.

Over the years, a lot of people have tried to talk us out of feeling about America the way we do. Instead of pride in what America has done, they want us to feel guilty — generally because we have so much more than rest of the world. Of course, it wouldn’t help the rest of the world one whit if we had less — either of freedom or of prosperity. On the contrary, it’s our liberties that have made us prosperous and there’s no reason the rest of the world couldn’t be just as well-off — if they embraced freedom as well.

Almost always, when I talk to people who see America as the problem, their arguments are based on ignorance or an outright tangling of history. What they thought they knew about America and the world came second- and third-hand through people with axes to grind.

That’s why I was troubled recently when I came across a report by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The report’s conclusion was that American colleges and universities are failing to increase their students’ knowledge of America’s history and institutions.

Students polled in a wide range of colleges and universities showed no real improvement in their historical knowledge. Some actually forgot part of what they’d learned in high school by the time they graduated — and I’m talking about some of our best-known Ivy League schools.

Less than half of college seniors knew that, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” is from the Declaration of Independence. Less than half knew basic facts about the First Amendment. Half didn’t know that the Federalist Papers were written in support of the Constitution’s ratification. Only a quarter of seniors knew the purpose of the Monroe Doctrine.

This is our quandary. Memorial Day is about remembering. It’s about remembering those who died for our country; but it’s also about remembering why they believed it was worth dying for. Too many Americans, though, have never been taught our own history and heritage. How can you remember something that you’ve never learned?

Labels: Fred Thompson, Hearts and Minds, History, Patriotism

Labels: Al Qaeda, Iran, Islamic Fascism, Nuclear, Terrorism

Labels: Iran, Islamic Fascism

Op-ed writers (and presidential candidates) will of course continue in the coming months to deny the obvious: That we are fighting (pace John Edwards) a real war on terror; that Iraq is, as al Qaeda says it is, the war's central front; and that the Iranians and Syrians are actively supporting our enemies. But the Bush administration, with congressional obstruction on hold, can move ahead with policies that deal with reality.

The reality is that foreign fighters are flowing into Iraq to kill Iraqis and Americans. Almost all suicide bombers in Iraq are foreign fighters, for whom this is the crucial battle. This means that our victory there will be an important victory in the larger struggle against terrorism--and our defeat there would embolden and empower our enemies. And the reality is that Iran and Syria are enemies. Most foreign fighters join al Qaeda in Iraq via Syria. And Iran has been sending advanced weapons and advisers into Iraq. These weapons and insurgents supported by Iran are killing our soldiers on a daily basis. There should be no doubt about the hostile role Iran and Syria are playing in Iraq today.

General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are already focused on these realities. They've just completed a strategic review and are pursuing a joint campaign plan to win the war. But even as the leaders of the political and military effort in the theater work to grapple with real problems, some in the Bush administration continue to toy with exit strategies and diplomatic strategies that imperil the victory strategy the president has embraced.

[...] Congressional battles calling into doubt our commitment to winning in Iraq have been the major threat to progress since the president began pursuing the right strategy in January. The president, supported by congressional Republicans, has beaten back that threat. Now he needs to deal with his own administration, which has not made up its collective mind to support the president's strategy wholeheartedly. Mixed messages from Bush's advisers and cabinet undermine the efforts of our commanders in the field. The president adopted a new strategy four months ago. The new commander took over three months ago, and the new ambassador not long after. All the military units will soon be in place, and the provincial reconstruction teams constituted. This is no time to hedge or hesitate. Now is the time to put everything behind making the president's strategy--which looks to be a winning strategy--succeed.

Labels: Iraq, War strategy

"We are making progress for the American people, governing effectively and getting results. Our work is not over, it has begun," said Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland."I've been here 26 years; I think this first five months may be the most productive five months that I've spent as a member of ... Congress," he said.

The most productive? Until this week, the only accomplishments that Pelosi & Co could highlight was (a) a funding bill left over from the last session, (b) a minor NATO restructuring plan that had no opposition, and (c) a number of bills that renamed federal property like post offices. The Democrats spent almost four months playing around with the Iraq supplemental, trying desperately to craft it in such a fashion as to force a withdrawal and blame it on George Bush, only to get outplayed by the White House.

Even this one accomplishment is hardly noteworthy. The Democrats could probably have passed the minimum-wage hike on its own months ago. All they had to do to get White House buy-in was to include tax relief for small businesses to offset the costs, which they did in this bill anyway. Bush indicated early in the session that he would not veto a package that included both, and the wage hike has enough Republican support to carry the day in the Senate.

Steny Hoyer tried hard to sell the first four months of this session as a proud moment in Democratic history, but it has been a complete embarassment. They folded on Iraq, they dithered on ethics legislation, and they accomplished almost none of their rapid-fire agenda that they claimed would pass within the first 100 hours of the 110th. Over 150 days later, most of it remains on the table, and the "Do-Nothing" insult they threw around freely during the midterms has stuck to them with a vengeance.

Labels: Congress, Defeatocrats, Democrat, Democrat Sabotage

[...] Americans are skeptical about the legislation, but not because they have suddenly succumbed to nativism. Rather, the public has slowly come to the conclusion that the government cannot be trusted to mean what it says about immigration.

In 1986, when there probably were 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants, Americans accepted an amnesty because they were promised that border control would promptly follow. Today the 12 million illegal immigrants, 60 percent of whom have been here five or more years, are as numerous as Pennsylvanians; 44 states have populations smaller than 12 million. Deporting the 12 million would require police resources and methods from which the nation would rightly flinch. So, why not leave bad enough alone?

Concentrate on border control, and workplace enforcement facilitated by a biometric identification card issued to immigrants who are or will arrive here legally. Treat the problem of the 12 million with benign neglect. Their children born here are American citizens; the parents of these children will pass away.

[...] To sentimentalists who cling to "the myth of the redeeming power of Hispanic family values, the Hispanic work ethic, and Hispanic virtue," she says: From 1990 to 2004, Hispanics accounted for 92 percent of the increase in poor people. Only 53 percent of Hispanics earn high school diplomas, the lowest among American ethnic groups. Half of all children born to Hispanic-Americans in 2005 were born out of wedlock -- a reliable predictor of social pathologies.

[...] Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation stunned some senators who heard his argument that continuing, under family-based immigration, to import a low-skilled population will cost the welfare state far more than the immigrants' contributions to the economy and government. He argued that low-skilled immigrants are costly to the welfare state at every point in their life cycle, and are very costly when elderly. Just the 9 million to 10 million illegal adults already here will, if given amnesty, cost an average of $300,000 -- cumulatively, more than $2.5 trillion -- in various entitlements (Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, housing, etc.) over 30 years.

To those who say border control is impossible -- often these are the same people who said better policing could not substantially reduce crime, until it did -- one answer is: It took just 34 months for the Manhattan Project to progress from the creation of the town of Oak Ridge in the Tennessee wilderness to the atomic explosion at Alamogordo, N.M.

That is what America accomplishes when serious.

In an attempt to anesthetize people who sensibly say "border control and workplace enforcement first," important provisions of the legislation would supposedly be "triggered" only when control of the border is "certified" by the president. But in what looks like a parody of the Washington mentality, certification would be triggered not by border control but by the hiring of border control agents and other spending.

Labels: Border Protection, Illegal Immigration

One of them’s a suspected associate of Zarqawi’s. What’s a control order, you ask? Rusty analogizes it to probation, leading one to wonder why four suspected terrorists would be allowed out in public instead of locked away. Answer: because they haven’t been tried or convicted of anything. Control orders are actually a hybrid legal device that lets the Brits impose certain legal disabilities on people — electronic tags, limitations on freedom of movement, mandatory check-ins with the police, etc. — if they’re suspected of jihad but there’s not enough evidence to prosecute. Needless to say, they’re highly controversial and highly ineffective: this isn’t the first time a suspect’s skipped out.

Labels: Islamic Fascism, Terrorism, UK

Labels: Homegrown Jihad, Islamic Fascism

Bush needs a unified Republican Party going into the fall, which may be the most difficult moment of his presidency. The most likely scenario is that Gen. David Petraeus will report modest to substantial improvements in the war in Iraq, but not definitively enough to fend off Democratic efforts to use his report as a key occasion to end the war.

The president must have his own party in his corner at that time. And yet the party is on the verge of self-immolation over immigration. Passage of the bill would drain most of the remaining affection and respect for Bush from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who would have to deal with the populist fallout from the bill's passage.

He needs all the help he will get. And he will lose a lot of help. What's
astonishing about the bill's arrival is that the White House knows perfectly well it's political poison. In 2004 Bush first announced his immigration reform plans, and the response from the Republican base was so violent that he immediately tabled the subject.

Last year an immigration bill surfaced and all hell broke loose again. It was the dominant subject on talk radio for two months, and helped contribute to the lassitude that overcame the GOP base in the months before the election.

So here is Bush, entering a critical period on the most critical issue of his presidency and for the nation - and he is playing salesman for a piece of legislation that divides his own supporters.

He's got that right: this bill needs to be defeated. But there are political as well as National Security reasons. And Bush needs to back down and let the People and the Congress debate this. He has had his chance to sell this albatross. The future of the Western World may depend on what happens when the funding bill comes up in the fall--and a Republican Party divided by its President is not what is needed to prevail in the War at home.

Let it go, Mr. President: it's just not worth it. And the country would be better of with a bill that protects our borders first.

Labels: Illegal Immigration, Iraq, Republican

Labels: al-Sadr, Iraq

Labels: Al Qaeda, Hearts and Minds, Iraq, Media Bias, Media War, War strategy

Labels: China, Democrat Sabotage, Economics, The Left

Labels: Iran, Islamic Fascism

Labels: Congress, Government Bureaucrats, Government Spending

Labels: "Consensus" Science, Global Warming Hysteria, The Left

Labels: 2008 Presidential Race, Cartoons, John Edwards

Labels: Iraq, War strategy, War Successes

Labels: NGOs, Nutroots, The Left

Labels: Media War

Labels: Border Protection, Illegal Immigration

Labels: 2008 Presidential Race, John Edwards

Labels: 2008 Presidential Race, Defeatocrats, John Edwards, Mitt Romney

Labels: CIA Sabotage, Intelligence War against Bush Admin, Iran, Media Bias, Media War, Nuclear

Labels: Cartoons, Homegrown Jihad, Islamic Fascism

Labels: 9/11 Truthers, Bush Derangement Syndrome, Nutroots

Labels: CIA Sabotage, Intelligence War against Bush Admin, Iran

Labels: Illegal Immigration, Republican

Labels: Hearts and Minds, Iraq, War strategy, War Successes

Labels: Iran, Media War, Military, Sedition, Treason

Labels: Iraq, Media War, War strategy, War Successes

Labels: Iraq, Military, Military Families

Labels: CIA Sabotage, Intelligence War against Bush Admin, Iran, Media Bias, Media War

Labels: Democrat Sabotage, Jimmy Carter

Labels: Illegal Immigration

Labels: Homegrown Jihad, Islam, Islamic Fascism, Terrorism

Labels: Illegal Immigration, Islamic Fascism

Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban, UK, War Successes

Labels: Democrat Sabotage, Illegal Immigration

Labels: Illegal Immigration, Texas Politics

Labels: Islamic Fascism, Lebanon

No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq.

Some who have been critical of this effort from the beginning have
consistently based their opposition on their preference for a dictator we can control or contain at a much lower cost. From the start they said the price tag for creating an environment where democracy could take root in Iraq would be high. Those critics can go to sleep at night knowing they were right.

The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.

Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi
government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power.

American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

Labels: Democrat, Patriotism