The left is so predictable. I see that His Bloatedness The Swimmer will not give credit where credit is due. No surprise, of course.

AOW --

I've become convinced that anyone -- no exception whatsoever, that casts a vote for the Admiral of Chappaquiddick for any reason is either a profound moron or a traitor to this country. Looking at how often they've reelected the SOB in Mass convinces me that that the majority of voters there are beneath spit as Americans.

He and his leftist butt-buddies in Congress have to know, in view of all the information they have access to, that they endanger the lives of thousands and, in the long run, ultimately millions of Americans every time they try to interfere with our capacity for self defense in order to ply their slimy political agendas on this country.

When he, Reid and others not only don't give credit to protective venues that have blatantly proven themselves and saved thousands of lives, but also attempt to construe a successful operation such as the one in question as nothing more than an indication that the Bush administration has made us more enemies around the world, it should serve as a wake-up call to a whole lot of Democrats that they're hanging their hats on the wrong side of the voting booth.

Which, of course, it won't. All the little Clintonites, intelleftuals and general purpose leftwingnuts from the Bay Area to Mass will be parroting the latest bumper stickerisms of Aquaman and his cronies for weeks to come, while pretending that the saving of all those lives was merely some picayune event.

This is just one more attempt by Democrat critics to put the administrationi in a double-bind. A foiled plot makes it the administration's fault that we have enemies; a successful plot of course would be the administration's fault too.

Clearly, the critics either don't believe there is a concerted effort to bring terror to our shores, or they believe that if we just treat the terrorists as if they were liberal Americans, they would respond in kind to our loving ministrations. And of course, the more they cross boundaries, the harder we have to redraw the lines because obviously we're to blame for their misbehavior.

Unfortunately, reality states that if we behave that way, millions of Americans will die.

However, while these critics are unfit to govern, I would also criticize the administration and Republican Congress in that they have said the right words, but they have been double-minded in their actions in a way that comes across as self-serving at times. There's been too much lip-service; where is the truly concentrated and consistent focus on enhancing our security (rather than pork as usual) and calling us to sacrifice, rather than just acting too often like everything in America should go on "normally" as before 9/11 while our troops bleed overseas on our behalf.

Civil Truth --

Given all the evidence presented by the activities of Islamofascist terrorists dating well back into the late 1970s but most graphically and continuously exhibited from 9/11 forward, I don't think I'm being at all presumptuous when I say it's impossible for any of our political leaders to not be totally cognizant of the dangers posed to America and Americans by militant Islam. They simply can't possibly not fully know.

Therefore, their obstruction in our defensive venues is treason, no more, no less, and it is being committed solely for the purpose of discrediting a serving President and his administration in order to attempt to get one of their own into the White House.

I no longer believe this has anything to do with liberal politicians having a different view of nor even an iota of doubt as to the true dangers we face, nor of the need to continue with the surveillance programs they criticize.

They know, but they could care less about how many people might have to die because of their partisan politics. Every time a Reid, a Murtha, a Durbin, a Kennedy, a Pelosi or a Kerry opens its mouth, it is committing treason, pure and simple. They use the deaths of American G.I.s as political propaganda, wringing their hands with glee every time more U.S. military personnel are killed or mutilated, seeing more opportunities to cast stones at the Bush Administration. They take a successful antiterror operation and ignore the fact that it was achieved through means they officially despise, citing instead that it is merely an indication that Bush has made us more enemies around the world, stated in such a way as to make it sound like the terrorists involved are the same as normal, law abiding citizens of civilized nations.

I agree completely that there has been all too much self-serving politicking going on on the right, but there has been little in the way of wilfully obstructing our homeland security efforts (the border/ immigration issues being the single most notable exception).

My biggest criticism there lies with the President, however -- for his entire first term and the first year of his second, he failed, out of some inexplicable reluctance, to adequately communicate his reasons for war and his defense policies with the American people by allowing the left to trash his policies without adequately answering their accusations, making their arguments the only ones in town, so to speak.

It wasn't until after the NYT "exposed" two successful and necessarily secret ongoing intelligence operations that he really opened his mouth at all, and by then, the damage had already been done.