Ralph Peters takes the defeatists like Obama and Clinton to task with the facts of war and then concludes: . . . If we nonetheless quit Iraq in 2009, the defeated remnants of al Qaeda will be able to declare victory, after all. The organization will be able to re-launch itself as the great Muslim victor over the Great Satan. We'll have thrown away a potentially decisive triumph and revived the fortunes of the fanatics who brought us 9/11. And the above only detailed the defeat of al Qaeda. Far more is happening in Iraq, all of it good: Muqtada al-Sadr and his thugs have suffered a series of lopsided defeats; Muqtada's hiding in Iran, afraid to return; ...

The facts reveal that the answer to that question is a resounding "Yes!" From Powerline: On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, "and it hasn't made us safer." It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us. Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing. Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful. What follows is a partial history: 1988 February: Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Higgens, Chief of the U.N. Truce Force, was kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah. December: Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland, killing 270 people, including 35 from Syracuse University and a number of American military personnel. 1991 November: American University in Beirut bombed. 1993 January: A Pakistani terrorist opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two agents and wounding three. February: World Trade Center bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000. 1995 January: Operation Bojinka, Osama bin Laden's plan to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific Ocean, discovered. November: Five Americans killed in attack on a U.S. Army office in Saudi Arabia. 1996 June: Truck bomb at Khobar Towers kills 19 American servicemen and injures 240. June: Terrorist opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one. 1997 February: Palestinian opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one and wounding more than a dozen. November: Terrorists murder four American oil company employees in Pakistan. 1998 January: U.S. Embassy in Peru bombed. August: Simultaneous bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured over 5,000. 1999 October: Egypt Air flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 100 Americans among the more than 200 on board; the pilot yelled "Allahu Akbar!" as he steered the airplane into the ocean. 2000 October: A suicide boat exploded next to the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39. 2001 September: Terrorists with four hijacked airplanes kill around 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. December: Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," tries to blow up a transatlantic flight, but is stopped by passengers. The September 11 attack was a propaganda triumph for al Qaeda, celebrated by a dismaying number of Muslims around the world. Everyone expected that it would draw more Muslims to bin Laden's cause and that more such attacks would follow. In fact, though, what happened was quite different: the pace of successful jihadist attacks against the United States slowed, decelerated further after the onset of the Iraq war, and has now dwindled to essentially zero. Here is the record: 2002 October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government. 2003 May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for westerners in Saudi Arabia. October: More bombings of United States housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killed 26 and injured 160. 2004 There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad. 2005 There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad. 2006 There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad. 2007 There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad. 2008 So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

(Michael Ramirez Cartoons at IBD Editorials)

Joining the French-looking John Kerry and the effete, well-coifed John Edwards, Kathleen Parker points out that Barack Obama has now joined the Faux Bubba Club: Bowling for Obama Annie got her gun and Obama got his boot stuck in his mouth. By Kathleen Parker Barack Obama seemed to have survived the blasphemous rants of his preacher and remained relatively untarnished by the perceived dissatisfactions of his privileged wife. But he may be less lucky with remarks he made recently about embittered, small-town Americans, who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Those words now cling to Obama ...

As usual, Thomas Sowell is on the money: A Living Lie Obama's controversial statements in San Francisco are perfectly in line with his Senate record. National Review Online April 15, 2008 By Thomas Sowell An e-mail from a reader said that, while Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie. That is becoming painfully apparent with each new revelation of how drastically his carefully crafted image this election year contrasts with what he has actually been saying and doing for many years. Senator Obama’s election-year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed. There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the U.S. Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation — nor any other significant legislation, for that matter. Senator Obama is all talk — glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk — but still just talk. Some of his recent talk in San Francisco has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Barack Obama’s public image and his reality. Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so “bitter” that they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far Left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction —

Barack Obama fought hard to see that full-term, partially born babies could be murdered in Illinois. And he's proud of it. Now this: As a law professor, he put Roe at the center of his constitutional law course. That says it all: Roe is ahead of Marbury v. Madison, Dred Scott, and Brown v. Board of Education. The right to kill the most innocent among us is, in his mind, the centerpiece of the Constitution. If the Constitution means anything, it is that the least among us have the right to life and liberty. Some people argue that in ...

IBD Editorial Cartoons by Michael Ramirez.

Barack sells hope. Michelle sews despair. If Reagan was "Morning in America," Michelle is "Things Couldn't Be Worse." From a New Yorker piece, "The Other Obama": (H/T LGF) Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. ...

Obama ducked questions today about Tony Rezko. Here's why:

From Michael Ramirez at IBD Editorials