Stay the Course: News From the Left?

We should get out of Iraq.

Bush lied; people died.

There were no WMD in Iraq.

2,000 + soldiers have died for nothing.

Iraq is worse off now than under Saddam Hussein.

The United States would be safer had we done nothing following 09-11-2001.

Islam is a religion of peace as are all its worshipers.

The war is all about oil profits.

Halliburton is profiting from the war in Iraq and Vice President Cheney is behind its war profiteering. Halliburton is running the Presidency and the nation.

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Sound like Talking Points from the Left?

Of course it does.

Joseph Goebbels said it best: "a lie, repeated often and forcibly, gains the legitimacy of truth."

But wait; there's more. Support recently comes from sides least expected: two venues representing the Democrats and the Left, Joe Lieberman and The Economist, believe that we need to continue on our current military path in Iraq.

First, Joe Lieberman wrote in last Tuesday's 11-29 Wall Street Journal:

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

The cover of the 11-26 - 12-02-2006 edition of The Economist declares in bold white letters at the bottom: "Why America must stay," over a photo of a soldier behind sandbags in Iraq.

How can this be? And why would a left-leaning, Eurocentric, British publication print such tripe -- unless there were something more than a semblance of a grain of truth?

To wit:

Mr (John) Murtha and millions of others maintain that America is doing more harm than good in Iraq, and that the troops should therefore come home. This newspaper strongly disagrees. In our opinion it would be disastrous for America to retreat hastily from Iraq. Yet it is also well past time for George Bush to spell out to the American people much more clearly and honestly than he has hitherto done why their sons and daughters fighting in Iraq should remain in harm's way.

Every reasonable person should be able to agree on two things about America's presence in Iraq. First, if the Iraqi government formally asks the troops to leave, they should do so. Second, the argument about whether America should quit Iraq is not the same as the one about whether it should have gone there in the first place.
It must be about the future.

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Bestill my quaking heart that anyone from the Left should admit what lawyers commonly call "facts in evidence."

The Economist further admits:

The cost to America of staying in Iraq may be high, but the cost of retreat would be higher. By fleeing, America would not buy itself peace.

Mr Zarqawi and his fellow fanatics have promised to hound America around the globe. Driving America out of Iraq would grant militant Islam a huge victory.

Arabs who want to modernise their region would know that they could not count on America to stand by its friends. If such reasoning sounds negative—America must stay because the consequences of leaving would be too awful—treat that as a sad reflection of how Mr Bush's vision for the Middle East has soured. The road ahead looks bloody and costly. But this is not the time to retreat.

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You must be kidding me -- how totally bizarre is this? But there is even more, involving a major American politician in a way that she could not in any way have envisioned:

Even Hillary Clinton is not supporting a pullout of troops, much to the chagrin of Cindy Sheehan:

"I think she is a political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys," Sheehan writes in an open letter posted on anti-Bush filmmaker Michael Moore's website. "I would love to support Hillary for president if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don't think she can speak out against the occupation, because she supports it. I will not make the mistake of supporting another pro-war Democrat for president again: As I won't support a pro-war Republican."

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I feel a Moonbat Award coming on. . .