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The Dems’ Do-Over
This entry was posted on 2/26/2007 10:12 PM and is filed under Politics.
From the Feb. 26, 2007 issue of Investors Business
Daily:
The Dems’ Do-Over
Leadership: Democrats now
want to take back their votes in support of the 2002 resolution approving the
war in Iraq. Like schoolchildren, they seem to think they can have a “do-over.”
They’d better grow up.
Democrats
voted for the war in Iraq on Oct. 11, 2002, and helped to build strong margins
of victory in both the Senate and the House. And no, they weren’t “duped” into
it by a deceitful White House.
Nor was
their collective decision based narrowly on the idea that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction, as some now maintain. The Iraq War Resolution
that was passed lists no fewer than 23 reasons for going to war with Hussein.
Now,
here’s Friday’s headline in the Washington Post: “Democrats Seek to Repeal 2002
War Authorization.” In what the Post calls “an unofficial war council,” a number
of senators are drafting a new law to require, among other things, withdrawal of
combat troops by April 2008, with only a small remnant left to help with
“training, border security and counterterrorism.”
Another,
even worse idea would force an immediate troop withdrawal, with remaining troops
allowed only to fight al-Qaida.
Imagine
that — a U.S. soldier is fired on, and he’ll have to ask for the terrorist’s
al-Qaida membership card before he can fire back.
By the
way, four of the seven senators who took part in this defeatist exercise — Joe
Biden, Majority Leader Harry Reid, John Kerry and Charles Schumer — voted “yea”
in 2002. Now, as the war’s support weakens, the senators say they’re against it.
Sorry, but four years into a war, you can’t just “repeal” your responsibility
for it.
As we’ve
said before, whatever else you might think of the Democrats in Congress, they’re
completely untrustworthy on national security. That’s why Sen. Joseph Lieberman
might join the GOP.
In
approving war in 2002, Democrats had the same intelligence President Bush had —
the same that intelligence agencies around the world virtually unanimously
believed. It said this: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and
planned to make more.
He did
have WMD, though not in the numbers we feared (U.S. troops found several hundred
canisters, mostly with mustard and nerve gas). And he did plan to make more, as
the CIA’s Duelfer Report — often cited by Democrats — noted.
Securing
Iraq and ending the factional terrorism that has riven its population has been a
tough task. As the war’s popularity wanes, Democrats have desperately sought to
absolve themselves of responsibility for what they did.
The Senate’s “unofficial
war council,” as such, is only a symptom of a far more serious disease: the
Democrats’ surrender to the far left that now controls the party’s agenda. Look
at Rep. John Murtha’s proposal for a “slow bleed” of our troops. Or the House’s
failed vote a week and a half ago, pushed by Democrats, to halt Bush’s “troop
surge.” Do they care if we win? The Democrats’ official policy now seems to be
failure at any cost. Just like a coyote gnawing its foot off to escape a trap,
Democrats think they can simply revote on their original Iraq War resolution and
— presto! — they’re free, and it’s all George Bush’s fault. They can’t.
Americans aren’t stupid. Nor are they children. In life, there are no do-overs.
Only responsibility.
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