It is just a fact that civilian populations are far more vulnerable to enemy attacks, both physical and psychological in nature, than the soldiers of the US military and navy.

If Americans often act like useful idiots, then I suppose that’s due to how well protected and insulated from reality we are. The President has always been designed as a safeguard against such foreign and domestic influences, in my view. (That bit about foreign princes with a lot of money buying into the Presidency comes into mind) HIs powers of pardon and Executive Orders can literally stall and nullify any attempts to propagandize or deceive the American people. If those powers are used.

Yesterday we weighed in at the doc’s office to discover we’d lost 17 pounds since our previous visit six weeks back, the day we jumped on the wagon and started our Cold Turkey Diet. The doc shook our hand and…

I have also seen leftist “anti-war” groups brag about sending funds to terrorists in Fallujah (Code Pink), side with dictators who support terrorists, and seen Democrats come to the IZ and do everything possible to ruin our progress (without even once asking the troops our opinion).

I have also seen the list of WMD components we recovered in Iraq. Here is a partial list (all of this is open source and declassified). If these are not a “threat”, I would be happy to contact the man who inventoried them and have you taken to the site they are stored at. You should ask your congresspeople, who have seen the classified ISG Report from 2003, why they keep stating we found no WMDs? Do not tell me Bush said we didn’t. He sated that we did not find them in the quantities pre-war intel said they would be in. Then 20 tons of it is captured trying to cross into Jordan from Syria. I state that because you seem to like throwing the “Mission Accomplished” soundbyte around without adding what Bush said next (hint, read his speach).

Nuclear:
-1.95 tons of enriched uranium
-1000 radioactive sources (cesium and other isotopes)
-16 drums of yellowcake from Al-Qaim extraction plant
-An undesclosed rail gun system used to test nuclear detonations. Iraq developed this in secret in 1999. The gun was built at Al-Tahadi. It, along with 500 tons of natural uranium wsa found south of Baghdad in 2003.

Biological Agents.
-Live C. botulinum Okra B (makes batulinum toxin: 1 gram kills 10,000) found hiden in Iraqi Bilogical Weapon’s Scientist’s home.
-Discovered continued, out-lawed and concealed, research on Brucella, Congo Crimean Hemorragic Fever (CCHF), ricin, and aflatoxin. None of this was declared to the UN even after 12 years of sanctions.
-Ricin discovered in Sargat, Iraq along with hidden sacks of castor beans (labled as “fertilizer”) in al-Aziziyah.
-Human testing facilities (prisons) for BW agents.
-Mobile labs for BW agents buried in the desert. 11 found in Karbala.
-Mulitple small fixed BW sites/labs which the UN never knew about.

Chemical
-Multiple attacks against US troops using Mustard and Sarin gas filled shells
-Multiple attacks by terrorists against Iraqi civilians using chlorine gas
-Cyanide labs found in “Safe Houses” in fallujah
-5,000 Lbs of Cyanide found in Taji (total cyanide as of 2004 was 2,370 Kg or 2.4 million leathal doses)
-Various Chemical Weapons Labs

Most of this is in the released ISG Report from 30 Sept 04.

The war is not “going well”. But the war was not an easy decision in the first place, and is hardly a choice now. Opposition to the war in a principled way is certainly defensible, though at this point it would be nice to see such opposition come up with real alternatives that didn’t involve just shrugging at the prospect of genocide (see the NYTimes), or over the likelihood of another Al Qaeda state sponsor. On the other hand, opposition to the war that involves rooting for the butchers (a la Sicko Moore’s description of them as equivalent to “Minutemen”), or cheap, cynical, partisan potshots (e.g., bfflo tom’s jeering at Bush’s “weekly trips to aircraft carriers”) does indeed make one stupid or treasonous or both. Not that anyone cares enough to say or do anything about it, for now. But let’s see what happens after the Democrats take power, the country flees from the region, and the blood really starts to run.

Heh.

As others have already pointed out, this would have been — and still is — good advice to give to partisan Democrats and left-libs generally over the past five years. And had the advice been taken, the islamist strategy of playing on the fears and political fractures within the west, fostered by its liberal media, would never have had the success it’s had, the islamist butchers would have had to try something else, and our troops would be on their way home from a democratized Iraq by now.

As it is, unfortunately, the odds are now good that the US will again experience a major defeat and retreat, in a war with a much more vicious and evil enemy than it’s ever faced. There’s still hope, of course — at least until, as Otto says, “the democrats take power”. Then watch for not just the bloodbath and “genocide” (that even the New York Times is predicting, in a gruesomely offhandish way), but also the triumphant flourishing of Al Qaeda within a protected state environment again. What’s funny about Otto’s little tantrum above (however sad and sick as well) is the evidence it provides that, as the good-fun era of Bush-bashing begins to draw to a close, a certain level of foreboding has begun to leak into the sealed compartments of the left-lib mindset. It’s not that they’re worried about the slaughter of Iraqis — heavens no! It’s that they’re already starting to sweat about the possible exposure of their own asses, and the worry that they might actually be blamed for such slaughter. Hence Otto’s ironic — and preemptive! — attempt to SHUT any such critics UP.

Opposition certainly doesn’t make you a traitor. There are valid reasons for opposing any violent intervention anywhere. What makes the NYT editorial and those who believe in it stupid, however, is ignoring the litany of consequences that the Times itself lists. Tell me how those consequences are any better than the current situation? Tell me how the consequences benefit the U.S. in any meaningful way?