OpEdNews - Article: HOUSE LEADERS RESURRECT 9/11 ~ AVOID IRAQ DEBATE

" When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state": by Thomas Jefferson

In a typical act of Republican hubris, on the day the death count of American soldiers reached 2500, house Republican leaders have , once again, resurrected 9/11 in todays debate on Iraq ~ playing to their hard right constituency and painting the anti-war Democrats as weak, wavering and indecisive when compared to their fearless and decisive leader George W Bush.

Fortunately we have the benefit of reality and facts versus perception and I will now share with you the real debate about Iraq ( courtesy of American Progress Report ) and reinforce Thomas Jefferson's words in the process.

Allen L Roland

THE REAL DEBATE ABOUT IRAQ

by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney
Amanda Terkel and Payson Schwin / American Progress report

Today, the House of Representatives will spend the day debating the Iraq war. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), however, appears unwilling to address the administration's strategy in Iraq directly.

Instead, Boehner has crafted a resolution that focuses on the "war on terror" -- Iraq isn't even mentioned until the eighth paragraph. But in attempting to divert the debate, Boehner stumbled into the real issue. The Iraq war is undermining the ability of the United States to defeat international terrorists.

The Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine surveyed more than 100 of America 's top foreign-policy experts, conservatives and liberals, and 84 percent said America is not winning the "war on terror." (The consensus reached "across political party lines" with 71 percent of conservatives and 90 percent of moderates agreeing that America is losing the "war on terror.")

In the survey, which will be released today, participants list the Iraq war as one of the top two reasons America is less safe, rating the administration's Iraq policies a dismal 2.7 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Moreover, 77 percent of participants said the Iraq war is having a "very negative impact" on "protecting the American people from global terrorist networks and in advancing U.S. national security goals." (Another nine percent said the impact was "somewhat negative.")

The message is clear -- to effectively address the threat of international terrorists, America must change course in Iraq. The Center for American Progress has a plan.

THE DATA TELLS THE STORY:

The pessimism of the experts surveyed is backed up by empirical data. Using the Bush administration's own statistics, the problem of international terrorism is worse now than it was in 2001. According to State Department data, the number of significant international terrorist attacks tripled to 650 in 2004 from last year. (The 175 international terrorist attacks in 2003 was itself a 20-year high.)

In 2005, international terrorist attacks spiked significantly again, although the Bush administration refused to release directly comparable numbers.

Another Bush administration agency, the National Counterterrorism Threat Center, found that 3,192 incidents of international terrorism occurred last year, resulting in the "deaths, injury or kidnapping of almost 28,500 people."

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