Where's the middle?

[Hamlette]

The soccer moms I run into don't much seem to care that he lied. Shrug. "Good to be glad of Saddam. He was a creep."

But what does play is: Do you feel safer? No weapons, no nukes, no ties to bin Laden. It's costing $5 MILLION AN HOUR, $125 MILLION A DAY to fight this war and the Iraqis don't seem thrilled to have us there. I wouldn't send my son to Iraq to be killed by the people we supposedly liberated.

I don't feel any safer. Just like I didn't feel any safer when we were fighting in Vietnam. If it doesn't make us safer, what is OUR interest in being there? Do we have a right, a duty, to invade and fight and die and pay for a war when our national interest is not at stake? I'd rather pay for better education for our kids, health care for our parents...not oil.

Stops even the most conservative ones cold. Try it. It's kind fun.

[lkinsale]

1. That's the Graham message, and I think it's got real legs in suburbia

Frankly, it made so much sense when I first read what he said about it, that's what made me look up his website and join his campaign.

Face the Nation May 11, 2003. (I have posted this excerpt a couple of times but it says everything so succinctly that I think it bears serious reading by everyone considering the national security situation and the candidates. This guy knows what he's talking about.)


McMANUS: ...One of the things that you've also done, Senator, is criticized the Bush administration on terrorism. You said you were worried that the war in Iraq would take resources away from the fight against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Did that actually happen? You've been on the Intelligence Committee. Tell us if the war in Iraq did damage the anti-terrorist campaign.

GRAHAM: It did. Beginning 14 months ago, the military stopped calling it the war on terrorism and they call it a manhunt, as we shifted military and intelligence resources out of Afghanistan and Pakistan to get ready for the war in Iraq. For that reason, al Qaeda, which was on the ropes about a year ago, has been able to regenerate itself and carry out that very complex set of terrorist acts that ranged from Yemen to Bali last fall and have every appearance of being capable of launching other terrorist attacks. And we haven't laid a glove on the A-team of international terrorism, which is Hezbollah.

SCHIEFFER: So, Senator, are you saying it was a mistake to go to Iraq? It was a mistake to topple Saddam Hussein, that the world is -- that there's not much change in what's happened now that Saddam Hussein is gone?

GRAHAM: Oh, Saddam Hussein was or is an evil man. But he lives in a neighborhood with a lot of evil people. Seems to me that the judgment required of a leadership of the United States was which of those evils had the greatest capability of hurting and killing Americans? And in my judgment, there's no question that that means the international terrorist groups which have already done it, September the 11th, and before, and which have the capability, including the large number of their operatives who are located inside the United States to launch future terrorist attacks. In my judgment, we should have pursued the war on terrorism to victory before we moved to Iraq.

SCHIEFFER: Do you -- just to try to pin you down a little bit here, do you -- are you saying that toppling Saddam Hussein really made no difference? I guess I'm asking do you think we're safer now or about the same or not as safe as we were before we went into Iraq?

GRAHAM: I think you could make the case that we are less secure...

SCHIEFFER: Really?

GRAHAM: ...as a result of the Iraq war because we have taken the focus off the international terrorists. For instance, we've known for a long time that Syria and the Syrian-controlled areas of Lebanon, there was a substantial presence of the most violent terrorists in the world and yet until recently we've been unwilling to confront Syria with that fact, and demand that either they take care of that cesspool or that we, with a coalition like we've had in Afghanistan, would take care of it.

*******

I can't say I feel safer with Bush at the wheel.

[tom_paine]

2. A kick for a well said rationale

:kick: