To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten, when those towers fell
We had neighbors still inside goin through a livin hell And you say we shouldn't worry bout Bin Laden Have you forgotten?

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

Of course, anyone who actually believes Al Qaeda propaganda obviously isn't all that sharp and is no match for American propaganda.

Good luck to those poor misguided folks who don't see that their beloved leaders are not the mythical shepard leading them to safety but are instead the practical shepard keeping them safe long enough to sell them to the slaughter.

I have to commend you for your reasoned position on this issue, but I also must express my hope that the Republican Party continue to feature the the seething stupidity of half-wits like Bithead or pompous buffoons like bains. Every time they vomit out their "Democrats-are-friends-of-the-terrorists" idiocy, it exposes the speciousness of Republican calls for bipartisanship, and provides perfect cover for investigating the Simpering Imbecile week after week after week. It just goes to show, you can

never

overestimate Republicans' fanaticism, childishness, or comical lack of self-control.

Now to the crux of your post, that al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, et al, have been mimicking the rhetoric of the left is somehow unimportant. It's not just the right partisan that interprets the left's comments as appeasement, its the jihadists as well. Irrespective of the home front propaganda value, our enemies are not forcing contrived interpretations nor false contexts, they are quoting US politicians verbatim. And therein is the problem. The propaganda originates within the left of our own country. Al Qaeda is merely repeating it. For opponents of the Bush administration to now complain that they have been miscast as appeasers or cut-and-runners is truly disingenuous.

There is plenty of partisan blinders to go around, including on the leftward side of things.

However, just saying "the other side does it too" isn't really very useful. Are we to say that what we ought to be doing is saying "everyone does it, so it doesn't matter?"

Who did the most during the campaign to tell the nation, the world, and the terrorists, expressly, that a Democratic victory would help the terrorists and lead to an American defeat?

Answering GW Bush ignores the fact that the left, for the past three years, provided the raw words which Bush favorably synthesized. It in fact exposes ones own partisanship.

...part of the answer is grounded in blind partisan loyalty that sees the Republicans as somehow the sole keepers of defense and security and the Democrats as the party of appeasers and cowards.

Just curious Steve, is another partisan equally blind when they rephrase this as "Republicans are usurpers of constitutional liberties or agents for corporate imperalism"?

The very fact that they are a group of murderous thugs who are clearly seeking to score propaganda points is enough of a reason for me to take their words with a grain of salt (if not a shaker).

It is remarkable that you would be so willing to take such people at their words just because they serve your partisan point of view.

So you are saying that you take al Qaeda at it’s word?

IN this case, I se no reason not to. Perhaps you can give us such a reason.... Explain to us how the democrats being in office, does not benefit the terrorists particularly when they've been making every motion possible to capitulate to them.

So if you’ll come up with some actual *reporting* on Conyers, Pelosi, at all, then I’ll be sure to give it the attention it deserves.

One word: Redeployment

Which of course is code, in this context, for 'surrender'.

Part of the problem seems to be that they think that the President's approach has been sacrosanct. Based on what?

In contrast to the war in Iraq. Context ...

Do you really think Pelosi is going to be giving permission for data mining?

Can the White House show that it's effective?

As for the "war on terror," one of the problems is thinking it's a "war." Counterterror is going to require some finesse, not just a bunch of Predator drones. (See our recent missile attack in Pakistan; were the returns of killing a few bad guys worth the reaction we caused?)

Terrorists are scum, like pirates & mobsters, and should be treated as such, with an intelligent combination of military & law-enforcement approaches, tailored to individual situations. Or, to paraphrase a bumper sticker I saw last week, "'Yeehaw!' is not a counterterror strategy."