IRAQ


The President was right to lead us into war because:

a. removing Saddam Hussein was the only way to ensure that death-loving, America-hating foreigners would never again manage to smuggle box-cutters onto American airliners;

b. if there was as much as a one percent chance that invading Iraq might increase our security, even by as little as one percent, the number of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians who would certainly be killed and maimed was irrelevant;

c. it’s better to concentrate as many American targets as possible in a place whose borders are even more porous than ours, so jihadi terrorists from around the world can attack Americans without having to clear US Customs; or

d. a real war makes violations of legal limitations-on-what-presidents-can-do even easier to justify than the rhetorical kind.


Republicans will never "cut and run" because:

a. they need to live down their sorry record of cutting and running from Korea and Vietnam;

b. if they did cut and run, they'd just have to trump up another war somewhere else;

c. if the country got the idea that it could cut one of the losses inflicted on it in the last five years, there's no telling where it would all end; or

d. they're too fat to walk, much less run, and wouldn't want to risk breaking a claw.


Democrats fear the "cut and run" label because:

a. they already cut and ran -- when the President was misleading the country into war;

b. they too are afraid that brute strength is the only resource the country really has to draw upon;

c. they're too uninformed or witless to propose rational alternatives; or

d. it's been so long since they took a stand on principle that few would view it as such if they ever did.


Democrats are best advised to take no position on Iraq because:

a. leaving the country to toss and turn in the bed the President has made for it will eventually prove that Democrats are ready for leadership;

b. vacillation is a proven winner at the polls;

c. indecision about how to use the military makes them look "stronger on security" than explaining why some security problems do not have military solutions; or

d. defending the least bad of the awful options the President has presented us requires smarts and guts that Democrats just don’t have.


The only chance we have of being out of Iraq by 2009 is if:

a. more troops are needed in Iran;

b. God instructs the President to reinstitute the draft;

c. the world learns that estimates of Iraqi oil reserves are based on audits conducted by Arthur Andersen; or

d. Jeb decides he does want to run in 2008.