Live from Baghdad

Complementary reports from Baghdad have been filed by Eli Lake in the New York Sun and Rocci DiPippo at the American Thinker. They are both interesting and impassioned reports. Lake asks:

Imagine what might happen were a suicide bomber to detonate himself at the Rayburn cafeteria. Would the first reaction of our lawmakers be that of Latif Haji Dartash, a Kurdish representative, who told me in a nearby parking lot after the Iraqi parliament was bombed that there is no way this attack would prevent him from meeting with his fellow legislators?

Lake answers the question by reference to the aftermath of the anthrax attack on Capitol Hill. DiPippo compares the Baghdad he observed during his recent trip on behalf of the civilian contractor for whom he works and with the Baghdad he observed only three months ago and asks a few rhetorical questions:

Why are the Democratic Party, the mainstream press, the human rights groups, the UN leadership and the “social justice” crowd currently pushing policy that virtually guarantees an Iraq genocide? Are they not familiar with what transpired after the US abandoned South Vietnam to the communists? Can they not see that their cries for US withdrawal threaten to take Iraq to the same places as the killing fields of Cambodia and Bosnia and Rwanda?

Lake quotes John Kerry’s reaction to the bombing of the Iraqi Parliament last week:

Senator Kerry certainly wasted no time, saying, “This is the progress we’ve been hearing about? And tell me, how are more American troops going to stop a single fanatic with explosives strapped to his chest.” The majority leader, Senator Reid, took the opportunity to tell reporters how out of touch President Bush is. See we told you this war could not be won, the Congressional leaders were saying, using it in their long running infomercial against the war most of them once supported.

As John Kerry takes his last star turn, the only question he has forgoten to ask is: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” But unlike Norma Desmond, Kerry is still small; it’s the war that has gotten big.
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