California Conservative

Thank God we didn’t strategically ‘redeploy’ ourselves out of Iraq. This story should make everyone pause before thinking about a ‘phased withdrawal’ from Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently testified that documents captured by coalition forces during a raid of a safe house believed to house Iraqi members of al Qaeda six months ago “revealed [AQI] was planning terrorist operations in the U.S.”

The implications of this document capture are pretty straightforward. If we’d listened to John Murtha, we wouldn’t have captured these documents because we would’ve pulled out of Iraq before the raid was conducted and the documents were captured. If we hadn’t captured these documents, we wouldn’t have known the specifics on how AQI was planning on conducting terrorist activities within the US.

Anyone who’s telling you that leaving Iraq won’t have severe consequences simply isn’t telling the truth. This article proves that leaving Iraq would have disastrous consequences. This next bit of information should get everyone’s undivided attention:

Sources tell ABC News that the plot may have involved moving between 10 and 20 suspects believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq into the United States with student visas, the same method used by the 19 al Qaeda terrorists who struck American targets on Sept. 11.

I agree with the Powerline guys when they say:

It’s hardly surprising that al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, like those elsewhere, will try to strike in the U.S. if they can.

The bigger point is that the capture of this information prevented another major terrorist attack inside the United States. The biggest point is that this exposes the Democrats’ utter ineptitude in formulating a coherent national security policy that would protect us from future terrorist attacks. This strikes at the heart of their multitude of policy bromides for Iraq. This event says that we need to stay there & defeat the terrorists, that it’s going to take alot of time and that we’d better get used to a long fight. The capturing of this information shouts that we can’t take a short term view of Iraq because there’s too much of a chance of it literally blowing up in our faces here in America.

For all of Hillary’s hopes of hiding her national security policy failures, the truth remains that she hasn’t put together anything remotely approaching a strategy to win the GWOT. Those in her party that are even further to the left than she is won’t let her cobble together a coherent strategy to win in Iraq. The frightening truth is that she likely thinks of foreign policy in much the same way as Bill Clinton did: as something that isn’t taken seriously.

The prevalent mindset of the 1990’s was that we could take a “holiday from history”. That mindset came a screeching halt when the terrorists crashed the jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We can’t afford a return to the 1990’s because our civilization is literally riding on dealing with reality. We can’t afford to ignore the 600 pound gorilla in the room just because we’d rather deal with the so-called ‘Mommy Issues’.

Technorati Tags: Al Qaeda in Iraq, 9/11, Hillary, Murtha, Terrorism, Iraq War

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Election 2008, Hillary, Homeland Security, Intel, Iraq, Middle East, Military, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.