"Lord Reginald Smithers" Ask me about my driveway leading up to my manor.
wrote in message ...
Harry,
Have you noticed even the Dem's don't want to set a timetable to pull out
of
Iraq.

"Kerry drones that we need to "set benchmarks" for the "transfer of
authority." Actually, the administration's been doing that for two years --
setting dates for the return of sovereignty, for electing a national
assembly, for approving a constitution, etc, and meeting all of them. And
all during those same two years Kerry and his fellow Democrats have huffed
that these dates are far too premature, the Iraqis aren't in a position to
take over, hold an election, whatever. The Defeaticrats were against the
benchmarks before they were for them.
These sad hollow men may yet get their way -- which is to say they may
succeed in persuading the American people that a remarkable victory in the
Middle East is in fact a humiliating defeat. It would be an incredible
achievement. Peter Worthington, the Canadian columnist and veteran of World
War II and Korea, likes to say that there's no such thing as an unpopular
won war. The Democrat-media alliance are determined to make Iraq an
exception to that rule. In a week's time, Iraqis will participate in the
most open political contest in the history of the Middle East. They're
building the freest society in the region, and the only truly federal
system. In three-quarters of the country, life has never been better.
There's an economic boom in the Shia south and a tourist boom in the Kurdish
north, and, while the only thing going boom in the Sunni Triangle are the
suicide bombers, there were fewer of those in November than in the previous
seven months.

Meanwhile, Iraq's experiment in Arab liberty has had ripple effects beyond
its borders, pushing the Syrians most of the way out of Lebanon, and in
Syria itself significantly weakening Baby Assad's regime. Saad Eddin
Ibrahim, who's spent years as a beleaguered democracy advocate in Egypt,
told the Washington Post's Jim Hoagland the other day that, although he'd
opposed the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, he had to admit it had
"unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon's 1798 expedition did. Elections
in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda,
even if only to fight against us. Look, neither Napoleon nor President Bush
could impregnate the region with political change. But they were able to be
the midwives."

The Egyptians get it, so do the Iraqis, the Lebanese, the Jordanians and the
Syrians. The choice is never between a risky action and the status quo --
i.e., leaving Saddam in power, U.N. sanctions, U.S. forces sitting on his
borders. The stability fetishists in the State Department and the European
Union fail to understand that there is no status quo: things are always
moving in some direction and, if you leave a dictator and his psychotic sons
in business, and his Oil-for-Food scam up and running, and his nuclear R&D
teams in places, chances are they're moving in his direction.

Toppling Saddam was worth doing in and of itself. Toppling Saddam and trying
to "midwife" (in Ibrahim's word) a free society would be worth doing even if
it failed. But, as it happens, I don't believe it will fail, not just
because of Bush but because enough Iraqis -- Shia, Kurds and even
significant numbers of Sunnis -- are determined not to let it fail."

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn...t-steyn04.html






"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Tamaroak wrote:
And you think the situation in Iraq is improving?

Capt. Jeff

Did we pull out of Iraq over the weekend? That's the only way we'll win
there.


--
Warriors