From a Chicago Sun-Times article, Our accomplishments in Iraq make for long list :
Our accomplishments in Iraq make for long list [/] November 28, 2005 [/] BY MARY LANEY
Oh, for a George M. Cohan. Oh, for a writer of songs like his "Over There" today. All the noise, all the static, and not a bit of music to herald these United States these days.
We're over there, we Yanks, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait. We kicked the Taliban thugs out of Afghanistan, sent them packing, and worked with the populace that emerged from the rubble, allowed a government to form, citizens to vote, women to go outside, girls to go back to school, and all to return to work in hospitals, stores and banks.
In Iraq, we cornered the dictator's sadistic sons and sent them to their final judgment. We captured their father, the tyrant and mass-murdering Saddam Hussein, dragged him out of a rat-hole in the desert and are bringing him to justice before a jury of Iraqis. We've seen the populace of Iraq vote on a constitution -- even under threat of being beheaded by Islamofascists -- going to the polls some 70 percent strong. Schools are opening, stores are operating and soon the Iraqi people will vote again on a new government.
But here we get all the static, all the talking heads, and all the theories of what's happening over there. We hear politics instead of facts. We get editorials in place of reports. We have Congress tied up with some politicians making threats and insisting that we set a date to withdraw our troops or withdraw our troops immediately. We hear them making accusations that President Bush lied when he said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction -- even though former President Bill Clinton said the same thing when he was in office, as did others in his party who now seem to be suffering from an acute case of amnesia regarding the recent past.
The supreme ayatollah of Iran is urging a speedy pullout of foreign troops from Iraq. Now, if former President Jimmy Carter were still in the White House, perhaps that would happen. Carter was the president, you'll recall, who wrote a nice letter to the Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran after his country took over the American Embassy and was holding Americans hostage inside. But there's a different president in the White House today. President Bush is not backing down in the war on terror -- despite all the noise and all the chatter and talking heads who are criticizing him.
The noise is so loud about the war, yet we're not hearing what we need to hear. We're not hearing from the soldiers, the generals, the boots on the ground. Why is this? [/] The soldiers are putting their lives on the line daily, yet we don't hear from them or about them in the myriad reports coming out of Baghdad. The Marines are making certain schools are free of bombs and children can go inside to learn. Yet we don't hear from them. We only hear of the fatalities of the war -- not the victories of the war. We see pictures of the soldiers who have given their lives, but no pictures of the heroes who are, daily, making progress over there.
There are those who would like to set a date by which we will withdraw American troops. That's like playing poker and telling which cards you have and when you intend to play them. It doesn't work in war.
There are politicians who are using the war to try to tilt Americans to change their minds. They continually refer to Iraq as another Vietnam. It is not Vietnam. Vietnam was a black eye for America. It was a time where America pulled out due to public opinion and then watched the slaughter of the South Vietnamese people after we left. Iraq is not Vietnam. If we pull out of Iraq, al-Qaida will follow us right back home -- to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Doubt it? Then you have forgotten 9/11 and just what happened after America failed to respond to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and failed to act when our Marine barracks, our Navy ship, and other American targets were attacked by al-Qaida.
[…] We're getting our reports from hotel rooms in Baghdad.
It's time for the whole story from over there. [My ellipses and emphasis]
And, of course, It Is All Bush's Fault.
