Democrats must emphasize security issues

[Human]

Just with my posts on this message board alone, it would sink you "democrats" on that issue.

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On the Illegal Immigration Issue, to the democrats again, go right ahead and grant all of those here illegally,

Legal status. As a matter of fact, I dare you to. <~~~ I will tell you what will happen if you do so;

 

The African American Community will be resigned to a PERMANENT third party minority status.

 

Like I have said before in here, I know the games you "democrats" are playing. There is no way in ahem that you "democrats" will give blanket immunity to the latino community.

 

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http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...cs/15445253.htm

 

Letter from Washington: Democrats must emphasize security issues

By Steven Thomma

 

McClatchy Newspapers

 

(MCT)

 

WASHINGTON - Democrats enter the fall campaign with a very good chance of winning back control of the U.S. House of Representatives - with one potential weakness that has plagued them since the days of George McGovern.

 

If they fall short, it likely will be because Americans didn't trust them to defend the country.

 

Republicans know that's their one best chance to hold onto unchecked power.

 

That's why Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld likened war critics to appeasers, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman calls them "defeato-crats," and more than one Republican congressional candidate says the Democrats will "unconditionally surrender" to terrorists.

 

Hyperbolic, sure. Demanding court warrants for wiretaps of suspected terrorist phone calls is not exactly selling out to Hitler - and make no mistake, that's what the word "appease" is meant to evoke.

 

Yet Republicans also argue, from a stronger foundation, that the Democrats would press for a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq and would limit such anti-terrorism tools as the Patriot Act or warrantless wiretaps.

 

Republicans will pour it on over the next nine weeks in a barrage of speeches, reinforced by ads financed by the $43.6 million war chest that Mehlman has amassed at the Republican National Committee.

 

Their hope: that fear of weak Democrats will overpower anger at bungling Republicans. A cynic might call it the wimps vs. the idiots.

 

There's reason for Democrats to worry - but not enough for Republicans to think they've turned the security corner.

 

A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 57 percent of Americans are concerned that Democrats would weaken American defenses if they won control of Congress - hardly a vote of confidence.

 

Yet 69 percent were concerned that Republicans would push the country into too many overseas military operations if they keep control of Congress - a vote of no confidence.

 

Democrats hope that drop in trust for Republicans on national security will negate the campaign against them.

 

"It won't work this time," said Tim Walz, who retired from the Army National Guard and is running for Congress in Minnesota on the Democratic Farmer Labor ticket. "People are pragmatic. They can see with their own eyes that this is failing."

 

Still, Democrats know their credibility on security remains suspect. Thus, they're fielding what they call the "fighting Dems" to challenge Republican incumbents.

 

They include dozens of veterans, such as Tammy Duckworth, a helicopter pilot who lost both legs in Iraq and is now a congressional candidate in Illinois, and Joe Sestak, a retired Navy admiral now running in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

 

"You're not going to get anyone tougher than me," Duckworth said in a recent interview. "But as far as I'm concerned, our national defense is more than just continuing to spend money without oversight in Iraq.

 

"I will try to find a diplomatic solution. But when the fighting is necessary, I will be there. That's why I stayed in the National Guard. I want to make sure that when that vote is cast in Congress, that it's my butt that's on the line."

 

Yet voters often look for more than a uniform or even personal courage in the people they choose to run the government. Ask John Kerry - or even George McGovern. Americans may have honored his record as a World War II bomber pilot, but they didn't trust him to lead the way out of Vietnam while standing up to the Soviet Union.

 

Looking forward, it's not clear what the Democrats would do. They remain divided, for example, over how to get out of Iraq. Some push for a timetable to leave, but many oppose it.

 

One challenger, Lois Murphy in suburban Philadelphia, said she didn't know how she'd vote if the Democrats took the House and anti-war liberals pushed to cut off funding for the war, the one real source of leverage the House would have.

 

Still, she and her fellow Democrats are confident that they'll win the national security debate this fall - because Republicans already lost it in the streets of Baghdad.

[BlingBling]

I do not think so Human. You show us no winning strategy. Just Republican scare tactics.

 

Here is the a vision from John Kerrry, the Senator who should have been our President.

 

It is immoral for old men to send young Americans to fight and die in a conflict without a strategy that can work - on a mission that has not weakened terrorism but worsened it.

 

It is immoral to lie about progress in that war to get through a news cycle or an election.

 

It is immoral to treat 9/11 as a political pawn - and to continue to excuse the invasion of Iraq by exploiting the 3,000 mothers and fathers, sons and daughters who were lost that day. They were attacked and killed not by Saddam Hussein but by Osama bin Laden.

 

And it is deeply immoral to compare a majority of Americans who oppose a failing policy and seek a winning one to appeasers of Fascism and Nazism.

 

The leaders of this administration have shown in recent days that they will say anything, do anything, twist any truth, and endanger our nation's character as one America in a desperate ploy to survive a mid term election.

 

After all the tough talk of "Wanted Dead or Alive," after the Administration bragged and boasted - they meekly backed off in the mountains of Tora Bora. Osama bin Laden escaped because the administration held back the best military in the world - our's - and outsourced the job to local militias. Since then Al Qaeda has spawned a vast and decentralized network operating in 65 countries. Only Dick Cheney could call this a success.

 

The situation in Afghanistan deteriorates steadily, squandering the sacrifices of our troops and allies in the military campaign of 2002. The Taliban now controls entire portions of southern Afghanistan, and just across the border Pakistan is just one coup away from becoming a radical jihadist state with a full compliment of nuclear weapons. Only Don Rumsfeld could proclaim this a victory.

 

There are five principal priorities that demand immediate action: (1) redeploy from Iraq, (2) re-commit to Afghanistan, (3) reduce our dependence on foreign oil, (4) reinforce our homeland defense, and (5) restore America's moral leadership in the world. These "5 R's"-if you want to call them that-- are bold steps Democrats will take to strengthen our national security, and that the Republicans who have set the agenda today resist to our national peril.

 

The central front in the war on terror is still in Afghanistan, but this Administration treats it like a sideshow. When did denying al Qaeda a terrorist stronghold in Afghanistan stop being an urgent American priority? How did we end up with seven times more troops in Iraq - which even the Administration now admits had nothing to do with 9/11 - than in Afghanistan, where the killers still roam free? Why is the Administration sending thousands more American troops into the crossfire of a civil war in Iraq but we can't find any more troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan?

 

You could get whiplash watching the Administration policy on Afghanistan change from day to day. On Sunday, asked which of the 26 countries in the alliance were dragging their feet in Afghanistan, NATO's top commander General James Jones, a four-star general and former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, replied, "All of them." Tuesday, Secretary Rice said we'll "pay for it" if Afghanistan again devolves into a terrorist stronghold. But just yesterday the Administration refused to heed its own warnings and refused to send the troops the commanders on the ground said we needed. That is both a tragedy and a scandal. And today? Silence.

 

The Administration's Afghanistan policy defines cut and run. Cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man's land. Cut and run even as we learn from Pakistani intelligence that the mastermind of the most recent attempt to blow up American airliners was an al Qaeda leader operating from Afghanistan. That's right - the same killers who attacked us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks against America and they're still holed up in Afghanistan.

 

We need a new policy - the one the president promised when we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Where NATO allies have pledged troops and assistance to Afghanistan, they must follow through. But the United States must lead by example by sending in at least five thousand additional American troops. More elite Special Forces troops, the best counter-insurgency units in the world; more civil affairs forces; and more experienced intelligence units. More predator drones to find the enemy, more helicopters to allow rapid deployments to confront them, and more heavy combat equipment to make sure we can crush the terrorists. And more reconstruction money so that the elected government in Kabul, helped by the United States, not the Taliban helped by al Qaeda, rebuilds the new Afghanistan.

 

That's how you win the hearts and minds of the local population, that's how you win a war on terror, that's how you show the world the true face of America.

[Guest human_*]

blingbling, I have nothing to gain by telling the truth in here. You really haven't figured it out yet? lol

 

There ARE democrats out there I actually like, and kerry is not one of them.

 

This place to me REALLY IS a gateway to Washington D.C., and not just on a local basis.

 

Hey!! If your side wins in these up coming elections then congratulations, and if not? Then better luck next time.

 

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I do not think so Human. You show us no winning strategy. Just Republican scare tactics.

 

Here is the a vision from John Kerrry, the Senator who should have been our President.