The Great Wall of Text

We must remember, too, that the conflict in Iraq is but one battle of many in a much larger war against the Islamic Jihad. In the five years we have been in Iraq we have lost a little more than 4,000 soldiers. Tens of thousands of Iraqi's and insurgents have died, a vast majority as a result of in-fighting and foreign trained terrorists trying to seize control of Iraq and return it to a terrorist state. The total death toll in Iraq according to many liberal sites is slightly over 90,000. Of course, these numbers anger the liberal left. They anger me too. If the Islamic Jihad did not declare war on us, we would not have to lose our young men and women while fighting this war. The liberal left fails to recognize that the Holy War was declared against us! And they fail to see that in any other war we have participated in the death tolls were in the millions, not tens of thousands as in the case of the Global War on Terror. Also, we must realize that compared to the number of deaths we would have lost in more attacks against the U.S., of which we have not suffered because of us taking the fight to the enemy, this number is relatively small. Remember, 3,000 American lives were snuffed out in one single day by the Islamic Jihad on 9/11. Had we not responded, how many other attacks claiming thousands of innocent Americans would have followed 9/11?

Well.. you know who. It's a two-for type of day. It's been a long time since Doug has pissed himself that badly.

First point I would make; learn to use paragraphs. Please, in the name of all that is holy (that would be Gorak), please do not abuse the senses of those that dare look into the abyss and suffer the onslaught of run-on-sentences and massive paragraphs of disjointed concepts.

Quite simply, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. They had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda. They had no WMD's. There was no "Islamic Jihad" in Iraq.

Doug does not substantiate his claim that "Tens of thousands of Iraqi's and insurgents have died", and "The total death toll in Iraq according to many liberal sites is slightly over 90,000."

Whenever somebody uses the word "many", that's a tip-off that they're pulling it out of their ass.

The Lancet study's figure of 654,965 excess deaths through the end of June 2006 is based on household survey data. The estimate is for all excess violent and nonviolent deaths. That also includes those due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc.. 601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95% confidence interval) were estimated to be due to violence. 31% of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24% to others, 46% unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56%), car bomb (13%), other explosion/ordnance (14%), air strike (13%), accident (2%), unknown (2%). A copy of a death certificate was available for a high proportion of the reported deaths (92 per cent of those households asked to produce one)

The act of 19, mostly Saudi, men, acting together, killing a large number of Americans in a terrible act constitutes a "holy war"? Entire religions at war? Umm.. okay..

Doug conflates many issues into one over-arching goal; the "Holy War". In that sense, Afghanistan and Iraq are just stepping stones into Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Their goal is a much broader conflict than we see today. He's going to be very upset when the conflict does not escalate, because you can't have Judgement day without the Armageddon, right? I might have the terms of the bizarre "end days" thing mixed up..

Doug also likes to use slogans, such as "taking the fight to the enemy". I'm surprised he didn't use the "fight them there, so we don't have to fight them here" slogan as well.. as if the "Jihadists" flypaper theory actually makes the least bit of sense. Ask yourself, if you were a "Jihadist" hell bent on the destruction of America, would you go to Iraq to fight the most powerful military in the world, or would you just do like the "illegal immigrants" do and find some soft targets?

There is zero evidence that any military action has been deterrent to further terrorists acts in the US. It's simply impossible to draw that conclusion.

It's also worth noting that the "liberal left", by over whelming numbers, supported the campaign in Afghanistan, to dismantle the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Iraq has been a diversion from that, and the fact remains that Bin Laden is still at large.

The liberal left seems to think that the Islamic Jihad against The West is somehow America's fault, or it is a minor thing that we need not trifle with. The leaders of the Democratic Party, and the anti-war groups that receive the media's attention, have determined that if we simply pull out of the region all bye-gones will be bye-gones, war around the world will suddenly stop, and then we can all get together, hold hands, and skip through fields of posies singing "Imagine" by John Lennon, or kumbaya.

Nice straw man argument again Doug.. It's silly.. simplistic, propagandist.. inane.. and on and on.

It's like you typed that paragraph with a crayon.

The "liberal left" quite well understands the implications of radical Jihad, and we're quite aware that Iraq had NOTHING to do with it, despite whatever wacky web sites you can link to.. or assertions that you can make that Iraq's WMD's were somehow shipped to Syria - or any of the other bizarre claims that try and create a link, that even the president has said doesn't exist.

Liberals also understand that terrorism isn't a zero-sum game. If you kill one terrorist, that doesn't mean there is one less. You may create two by that action. Effective and mature reasoning would indicate a vigorous intelligence and precautions, while at the same time resolving central conflicts that create the dissension. United States foreign policy is not completely benign, but it is not a justification to violence either. The English did suffer the "terroism" of the Irish Republican Army, but then the English did invade and occupy Northern Ireland.

How do you think they resolved that conflict? Did the English finally manage to kill all the IRA members?

In Doug's mind, there can be no resolution other than continual conflict (which he's not involved in) because he is convinced that Islam is a giant monolithic entity that is trying to take over the world and destroy everything we hold dear.

Hell, he even thinks that the "terrorists" are laying in wait, in American cities, for the signal from the mothership to start the Jihad in American streets.. where we would be fighting Red Dawn, not against the Russians, but against the Islamic Jihadists.

That is a hallucination of a disturbed mind - but it is what it is. You might want to check out your Muslim neighbors because they might just come cut your head off once the mothership gives the grand signal.

Ultimately, the issue is not a military one. Iraq has proven that, and the sooner we get our troops out of there, and as we go back and finish in Afghanistan, the better off we'll be. We can live in fear of the Islamic boogie man. We can give up all our civil rights, suspend the Constitution, torture prisoners, sacrifice thousands of American lives, kill thousands and thousands more innocent lives..

Or.. we can live unafraid, and fight this war the smart way.

That "relatively small" number of dead is all well and good.. until you, or somebody you love, is one of the dead.