Although I am loathe to use terrorist attacks for political purposes, it seems that Republicans feel that terrorist attacks pull people into the sense that Republicans fight terrorism and Democrats don't.
But we are now babysitting a civil war. It has been clear for some time that Iraq has no WMDs, has no ties to terrorist organizations and had only a brutal dictator. The real terrorist action is in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or so other nations.
The President rightly said that we cannot wait for terrorists to attack us, we need to take the fight to them. Then he promptly took us into a completely irrelevent fight with the Iraqis.
Is Osama Bin Ladin a risk to the US? I think so. Have we devoted all the resources that we possibly can to destroying him and his base of support? Not likely.
We have been bogged down with security a country that is exploding with sectarian violence. We are caught in the middle (we put ourselves in the middle), and our work there has nothing ...NOTHING...to do with fighting terrorism.
Its as though Bush set out to win the Superbowl by buying a baseball team.
Democrats want to leave Iraq so that we can pour our resources into fighting Osama Bin Ladin and the other terrorists around the world.
How is it possible that Cheney can say that this will give encouragement to the al Qaeda types. It seems that the al Qaeda types love the status quo. They love the idea that the US is in Iraq, wasting lives, money and credibility. Most of all, they like the idea that we are only making a half-hearted effort to erradicate the real dangers to the US and the world.