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[Spanky]

Another email from a friend of mine (needless to say I wasn't invited to this briefing).

I attended a White House briefing led by Vice President Cheney. He noted, in his matter of fact way, that the terrorists have no illusion that they will defeat the United States militarily. Rather, they desire to break our will, to have us retreat behind our two oceans noting that we had no business inserting ourselves in Middle East affairs. Then, with the sole remaining superpower out of the way and demoralized, they can dominate the region.

It does seem that many in the United States are pushing for such an outcome. They argue that we have lost too many lives already, it is not our battle, and that we have made no progress. This latter point is buoyed by the observation that a civil war seems to be inevitable in Iraq. The reasoning apparently goes that our efforts have ultimately failed if the terrorists are lobbing bombs at their own people as opposed to us. And therefore we should retreat.

If the retreat of the US is the goal of the terrorists, we have too many voices urging our cooperation. I am certain that there is room for improvement in our efforts in that region, but we can not allow the harassment of our enemies, be it on the battlefield in Iraq or in our commercial airlines overhead, to cause us to retreat.