Apocalypse ASAP By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, June 01, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Iraq: Democratic leaders are making it increasingly clear they'll let nothing prevent the U.S. from losing the war against al-Qaida and other terrorists in Iraq not even victory.
For them, defeat in Iraq cannot come too soon. They are that convinced a failed war blamed on President Bush would be a political gold mine in 2008.
As if to prevent anyone in America from starting to think things might be going better in Iraq, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel declared in a visit to the New York Daily News editorial board last week that "the president knows it's over."
Calling the commander in chief "the joke of America," Rangel of New York added: "The president is in the 15th round. He's lost every round."
When one of Congress' most powerful committee chairmen makes such remarks, it may get under the skin of a few politicians on the other side of the aisle; but the chief effect Rangel's wisecracks have comes when they get translated into Arabic and Farsi, and al-Qaida's operatives and sympathizers hear them.
What a morale boost for the terrorists to know that one of the House's most powerful and senior members considers his president a "joke." News like that must give the Islamofascists solace: A few more months of bombing the infidels plus slaughtering Iraqi women and children and they will have won. Indeed, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, recently assured al-Qaida's commander in Iraq that a historic victory was near there.
And how must those who wear the uniform of the U.S. and serve in Iraq feel?
The Democrats' aiding and comforting the enemy also goes beyond words. Rangel and Speaker Nancy Pelosi were among 169 House Democrats who voted last month for an immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq. Only 59 Democrats voted against it.
Sadly, Rangel's display of his party's investment in defeat comes amid clear signs of progress in Iraq. The full impact of the troop surge is still "yet to be felt," according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commanding general of the Multinational Corps in Iraq, who used Thursday's press conference to outline some of the successes.
Some 235 battalion-size operations throughout Iraq "have inflicted significant damage to the insurgency, detaining almost 18,000 extremists, killing and wounding more." Over roughly the past four months "we have captured and killed over 1,700 high-value targets." Coalition and Iraqi forces also have discovered 29 car bomb factories.
"For all of 2006, we found only 266 weapons caches," Odierno said. "So far this year, up through May, we have found 441. This is a direct result of our increased presence . . . of our ability to go in places in Baghdad that we have not been able to go before."
After the remarkable and unexpected quelling of Anbar province, in which tribal leaders joined coalition forces against al-Qaida, "we now see opportunities for further engagement across Iraq with other tribes and entities, to include mainstream Sunni and Shia insurgents," Odierno said. Even lower-level military commanders now are working with local Iraqi leaders, "attempting to create confidence-building measures among these various groups."
But it all falls on the deaf ears of Pelosi, Rangel and the vast majority of other congressional Democrats who clearly seem to be hoping, perhaps even praying, that the U.S. loses this war.