ON TERROR, WE'VE LOST OUR WAY

[Desperadoe]

Posted on Fri, Sep. 02, 2005



ON TERROR, WE'VE LOST OUR WAY

By RALPH R. REILAND


A MAJORITY OF Americans, 54 percent, say the U.S. "made a mistake" in going to war in Iraq, according to the latest CNN/Gallup poll. A similar number, 56 percent, say the war in Iraq is going either "very badly" or "moderately badly."

In the latest survey from the American Research Group, only 36 percent of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling his job.

That's down from 45 percent in March, the lowest approval rating of any president since World War II at that point in a second term, Gallup reported. All other presidents who served a second term had approval ratings well above 50 percent in the March following their re-election.

On Iraq, Nebraska's GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel maintains that the U.S. is "locked into a bogged-down problem, not dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam."<snip>

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/12540858.htm

[Desperadoe]

1. This is the part that should interest DU'ers

"And so, asks Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, where are the Democrats amid this GOP disarray, with the Bush administration stuck in an increasingly unpopular war, its plans to overhaul Social Security on the rocks and top White House mastermind Karl Rove on the way to a grand jury probe?

"Frankly, they are nowhere," asserts Ignatius, arguing that the Democrats are "failing utterly in the role of an opposition party," which is to provide, above all, alternatives on how the nation can combat terrorism and solve its long-term fiscal problems.

"Rather than lead a responsible examination of America's strategy for Iraq," writes Ignatius, "they have handed off the debate to a distraught mother who is grieving for her lost son." As Cindy Sheehan characterized the death of her son to ABC News: "He was killed for lies and for a PNAC neocon agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel."

Explains David Frum, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute: "PNAC is the acronym for the Project for the New American Century - a three-person think tank in Washington that fills a large place in the imaginations of America's left wing."<SNIP>