ONE CHOICE IN IRAQ

(Sparks from the Anvil)

The Senate Democrats are voting to secure victory for our enemies.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate is expected to pass a bill today that would order the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to begin this fall. Last night, the House voted 218-208 to pass the $124.2 billion supplemental spending measure containing the provision.

President Bush is expected to receive the bill next week, and swiftly veto it.

The legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to execute since they took control of both houses of Congress in January.

"The sacrifices borne by our troops and their families demand more than the blank checks the president is asking for, for a war without end," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said.

Democrats said the bill was on track to arrive on the president's desk on Tuesday, the anniversary of Bush's announcement aboard the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

...The huge bill would fund the war, among other things, but demand troop withdrawals begin on Oct. 1 or sooner if the Iraqi government does not meet certain benchmarks. The bill sets a nonbinding goal of completing the troop pullout by April 1, 2008, allowing for forces conducting certain noncombat missions, such as attacking terrorist networks or training Iraqi forces, to remain.

So the Dems in the Senate. along with some wobbly Republicans, are poised to pass a bill that hands our enemies in Iraq and the region and around the world a timeline for our surrender.

They've declared that the war is lost.

America has been defeated.

Given that al Qaeda is active in Iraq and killing Americans, the Dems are handing the extremists responsible for slaughtering nearly 3000 people on U.S. soil a victory.

It's disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful.

Independent Joe Lieberman, the man the Democrats threw under the bus, writes just how misguided the Dems are.

He spells out the consequences of their despicable actions in his column, "One Choice in Iraq."

Last week a series of coordinated suicide bombings killed more than 170 people. The victims were not soldiers or government officials but civilians -- innocent men, women and children indiscriminately murdered on their way home from work and school.

If such an atrocity had been perpetrated in the United States, Europe or Israel, our response would surely have been anger at the fanatics responsible and resolve not to surrender to their barbarism.

Unfortunately, because this slaughter took place in Baghdad, the carnage was seized upon as the latest talking point by advocates of withdrawal here in Washington. Rather than condemning the attacks and the terrorists who committed them, critics trumpeted them as proof that Gen. David Petraeus's security strategy has failed and that the war is "lost."

And today, perversely, the Senate is likely to vote on a binding timeline of withdrawal from Iraq.

This reaction is dangerously wrong. It reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both the reality in Iraq and the nature of the enemy we are fighting there.

...Al-Qaeda's strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. It is trying to kill as many innocent people as possible in the hope of reigniting Shiite sectarian violence and terrorizing the Sunnis into submission.

In other words, just as Petraeus and his troops are working to empower and unite Iraqi moderates by establishing basic security, al-Qaeda is trying to divide and conquer with spectacular acts of butchery.

That is why the suggestion that we can fight al-Qaeda but stay out of Iraq's "civil war" is specious, since the very crux of al-Qaeda's strategy in Iraq has been to try to provoke civil war.

The current wave of suicide bombings in Iraq is also aimed at us here in the United States -- to obscure the recent gains we have made and to convince the American public that our efforts in Iraq are futile and that we should retreat.

When politicians here declare that Iraq is "lost" in reaction to al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks and demand timetables for withdrawal, they are doing exactly what al-Qaeda hopes they will do, although I know that is not their intent.

Yes, as Lieberman points out, Harry "the war is lost" Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Russ Feingold and all the defeatist Dems are doing exactly what al Qaeda wants.

However, Lieberman cuts those Dems some slack, in effect excusing them for their actions by claiming that he knows they don't intend to aid al Qaeda.

I won't do that. I won't excuse them. I think their intentions about doing al Qaeda's work is irrelevant.

What matters is that they are doing it and for the worst reasons -- personal political gain.

True, there is only one RIGHT choice in Iraq.

Clearly, the defeatist Dems are making the wrong choice, pursuing a path that is certain to provide a strengthened foundation for al Qaeda and its Islamic extremist allies to destroy Israel and threaten America and the Free World.

The Dems are voting for defeat, humanitarian disaster and death.