In 1998, under the Clinton adminstration, Osama bin Laden made a prediction,
based on our retreat in Somalia, that we were (and will be) a paper tiger:

As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press after the Gulf War in which it destroyed the infrastructure . . . . Proud of this destruction, America assumed the titles of world leader and master of the new world order. After a few blows, it forgot all about those titles and rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers. America stopped calling itself world leader and master of the new world order, and its politicians realized that those titles were too big for them and that they were unworthy of them. I was in Sudan when this happened. I was very happy to learn of that great defeat that America suffered, so was every Muslim.

Bin Laden said that the US military fled Somalia, dragging its dead soldiers behind. He was happy about our defeat. He then calculated that we were weak enough to attack. He did, on 9/11.

Will we flee Iraq? We will if the democrats, the MSM and and 48% of the voters have their way, as we saw in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Vietnam. But we won't if the President, his adminstration, talk radio, the bloggers, and 52% of the nation have their way.

We should not even be discussing cutting and running, but the Dems can't seem to let go of their old ways of protesting and scoring political points off a war that we must win.

James Arlandson    6 27 05