Staying the course in Iraq

From The New York Times:

CHARLESTON, S.C., July 24 — President Bush sought anew on Tuesday to draw connections between the Iraqi group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, and he sharply criticized those who contend that the groups are independent of each other.

At a time when Mr. Bush is trying to beat back calls for withdrawal from Iraq, the speech at Charleston Air Force Base reflected concern at the White House over criticism that he is focusing on the wrong terrorist threat.

Mr. Bush chose to speak in the city where Democrats held their nationally televised presidential debate on Monday, a forum at which the question was not whether to stay in Iraq but how to go about leaving.

“The facts are that Al Qaeda terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they’re fighting us in Iraq and across the world and they are plotting to kill Americans here at home again,” Mr. Bush told a contingent of military personnel here. “Those who justify withdrawing our troops from Iraq by denying the threat of Al Qaeda in Iraq and its ties to Osama bin Laden ignore the clear consequences of such a retreat.”

Kevin Sullivan, the White House communications director, said the speech was devised as a “surge of facts” meant to rebut critics who say Mr. Bush is trying to rebuild support for the war by linking the Iraq group and the one led by Mr. bin Laden.

Democrats in congress and those running for president have a problem. The insane barking moonbat wing of the Democrat Party has grown so large that the party cannot win national elections without them. In fact Democrats in major states like California and the Northeast cannot win statewide elections without moonbat support. However the moonbats are not the majority of the Democrat Party.

In terms of their power to influence the Democrat Party's policies the moonbats occupy a similar position to the conservative Christians in the Republican Party. Not the majority in and of themselves, but the largest single group within the Party.

The problem for the Democrats in 2008 is that the moonbats take as their single most important issue opposition of the war in Iraq. This constitutes a problem for the broader Democrat Party because most Americans, even those who wish we were not in Iraq, do not wish us to lose a war against Islamofascists. Most Americans want us out of Iraq, but on terms of victory.

Most Americans also have not forgotten 9/11 and continue to support the war against Islamic terror. Congressional Democrats have tried to finesse the issue by claiming their opposition to the war in Iraq is based on the fact that it is a "distraction from the war against al Qaeda". The fact that the major force pushing the insurgency in Iraq has been calling itself "al Qaeda" has been dealt with by saying that al Qaeda in Iraq is a different organization than the greater al Qaeda.

This new and different terrorist organization would not exist and its members would not be anti-American terrorists if it were not for the US presence in Iraq, so say the Democrats. This contention has been recently and definitively proven false by the capture of a top al Qaeda leader in Iraq. This terrorist leader has informed us that the idea of a separate organization called "al Qaeda in Iraq" is a fiction. The terrorist in Iraq are nothing more or less than the greater al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden.

Al Qaeda now regards the war in Iraq as the most important front in its war against the United States. In a sense the Democrats are correct about Iraq being a distraction in the Terror War, but it is al Qaeda that is being distracted. Instead of planting bombs in Cleveland and Mobile they are planting bombs in Mosul. Instead of murdering unarmed American civilians who are just trying to go to work or shopping or to school or have dinner in a restaurant they are trying to kill the US soldiers and Marines, who shoot back and always give far better than they get.

The knowledge that things are not going badly in Iraq is beginning to seep into the overall American consciousness despite the best efforts of the mainstream media to keep it out. This can be seen in the results of recent polls which show the public's attitudes about Iraq undergoing a change toward increased support for the war effort.

If the general public ever fully realizes that the war in Iraq IS the war against al Qaeda, that the practical result of our invasion of Iraq (whatever our intentions at the time) has been to shift the battlefield from our own cities to the soil of a Middle Eastern nation Democrat electoral hopes for 2008 will vanish like a snowball in a blast furnace.

This is why the House and Senate's Democrats are doing everything they can to force a rapid defeat for the US in Iraq. It is becoming more and more obvious to them that their allies in al Qaeda cannot hold out much longer and that their allies in the mainstream media cannot keep the American public from realizing the truth for very much longer.

As they watch their hopes and dreams slip away expect them to become more and more desperate, hysterical and irrational.

Expect hijinks.