... it is so frightening to see the ghosts of the Vietnam War protest movement haunting the current war in Iraq. Bring the troops home. End the war. Stop the carnage. Throw the Republican bastards out. I embraced it the first time around. To do so this time, however, I believe is suicide.

... Unlike the Viet Cong, Islamo Fascist terrorists have done a good deal worse than use racial epithets against us. They killed close to three thousand of us on 9/11. They tried to do the same in the first World Trade Center bombing, same characters, same building. The only problem was the placement of the bomb. They have announced their intent to do it again, only worse. And they are not alone. It is not only Al--Qaeda but the Iranian Islamic revolution and the terrorist organizations they now back. And please don't kid yourself that this is a result of Iraq or Afghanistan or George Bush. The first act of the Iranian revolution was to kidnap an entire embassy full of American hostages. The current President of Iran was one of the hostage takers in his halcyon student days. That was his coming out party, and now he's the one who not only envisions a world without Zionism but a world without America as well.

... I know you don't like Bush. I don't like Bush. Nobody likes Bush. Fair enough. He lied to you. He mangles the language. You can't trust him. He's in hock to Haliburton. He has some weird daddy complex. Whatever you want to believe about him, believe it. Fair enough. You win. No arguments.

...And you don't like the war. You were lied to. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Bush and the neocons made it all up. They duped us. They duped you. They duped me. They duped Hillary and Kerry. They duped us all. Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe. Done deal. Not only did they dupe us, but they dicked it up, made every mistake in the book.

...Pick whatever argument you like. They should have had more troops. They should have had less troops. They should have listend to Chalabi. They shouldn't have listened to Chalibi. Bremer was right. Bremer was wrong. Rumsfeld's a bozo. Bozo could have done a better job. I'll sign on to any part of it you like. They said this is a part of the war on terror, and of course that's a lie too.

Ooops.
What do you mean, oops?
Well, what I mean is that part is actually true.
What part?
The part about Iraq being a part of the war on terror.
You've got to be kidding. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11! There was no connection between Iraq and Al--Qaeda!
Maybe not, but there is now.
Well, who's fault is that?
Doesn't matter.
What do you mean it doesn't matter?

... I mean, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how we got there. It doesn't matter how you think you were lied to. It doesn't matter if you think there was a connection between Sadam and Al--Qaeda. The only thing that matters now is that both Al--Qaeda and Iran and the terrorist groups they back and inspire believe that Iraq is their decisive battle. They have chosen it as the place where they will defeat America, and unlike the Viet Cong, they will not stay put. They will follow us home.

... To put it in its simplest terms, we can quit the battle field but the battle field will not quit us.

... But you say that we've already lost in Iraq. If you don't believe it just watch CNN.

... Well here is the odd truth, which for some reason, absolutely no one seems to realize. Precisely because Iraq is such a mess, the terrorists now believe it is all but inevitable that they will win. They can smell victory. They can taste it. They are ramping up the equivalent of their air craft carrier landings under the banner 'Jihad Accomplished.'