I’m sitting here thinking about a title for this post that would capture how vile Reid and Schumer are. I can’t think of any metaphor that would fit with their current actions, calling them vultures would do a disservice to the vultures because at least a vulture waits for it’s prey to die before it feeds on the carcass, it doesn’t tear apart the living. Maybe they’re hyenas:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he plans to continue an aggressive push for an early withdrawal from Iraq and does not particularly care that Republicans will try to paint that position as a lack of support for U.S. forces.

Why? Because “We are going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war,” the Nevada Democrat predicted at a news conference.

Sitting next to him was the man charged with making that happen: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles E. Schumer of New York.

“The war in Iraq is a lead weight attached to their ankle,” Schumer warned, predicting that congressional Democrats will pick up additional Republican votes for Democratic initiatives as the 2008 elections approach.

“We will break them, because they are looking extinction in the eye,” Schumer declared, making no attempt to hide his glee.

His glee? That is why I thought of hyenas:

They are known for a chirping, birdlike bark that resembles the sound of hysterical human laughter.

These people don’t care about the troops or about the Iraqi people, all they want is power. They could care less about the safety of America. And that is why Giuliani is 100% right about what he says about them:

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.

“If any Republican is elected president — and I think obviously I would be the best at this — we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

[…]

“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”

He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”

[…]

“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”

(via)

This is serious and the Democrats just don’t get it, they don’t understand the threat we are facing. Al Qaeda wants us to leave Iraq so that they can spread out to other areas and cause havoc there. It’s always been a part of the plan that after they had trained their people in Iraq then they would send them to other nations to topple them. From Hugh Hewitt’s interview with Lawrence Wright:

HH: Now let’s talk a little bit about what the vision is, not just of bin Laden and Zawahiri, though they are the heads, in many respects, of this vast and disbursed organization. But you chronicle in the New Yorker article from September of ’06 a five stage plan. Is that the dominant planning document? Do the individuals subscribe to that vision?

LW: This…what you’re referring to came from a book by a Jordanian journalist called Fouad Hussein, who wrote a biography of Zarqawi, the late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. And this Zarqawi legacy that we’re dealing with in Iraq now, he’s the one that instigated the civil war between the Sunnis and the Shia. And it was no doubt from him, but also from Saif al-Adil, the al Qaeda security chief who has taken refuge in Iran, that Fouad Hussein drew from them this plan, the master plan as I call it, of al Qaeda. And it begins with the strikes on America, on 9/11, the first stage called awakening. And the idea was to strike at America, and cause it to, as he says, act chaotically in response. And the first stage ends with the fall of Baghdad. And then, the next stage begins with the training of jihadis who stream into Iraq to fight against the Americans. And then that stage was, according to their plans, to last to 2006. And then they would go back to their own countries and topple the repressive regimes there, and set up a caliphate that would reach across national boundaries. And then by the year 2016, they would create a pan-Islamic army to engage in a final apocalyptic war with the unbelievers that would finally be resolved, be won by the Islamists in the year 2020, you know, with complete victory, as they call it, which would mean the end of all suffering. That’s the master plan for al Qaeda.

HH: When did they articulate that?

LW: It was about four years ago in that Fouad Hussein book.

HH: So after the invasion of Iraq? After the toppling of Saddam?

LW: Yes.

HH: But then…so there’s a little bit of post-hawk…

LW: Oh, it’s very, very self-serving, and very much so, as are many of these al Qaeda documents. They’re meant to be read in the West.

(Go listen to the rest here.)
We either fight them over there are we fight them here. They won’t give up just because we leave Iraq. I’d rather it be over there:

US forces have killed an Al-Qaeda kingpin they allege sent 12-year-old Iraqi boys to their deaths as suicide car bombers, they said Wednesday, amid an intense battle with insurgents around Baghdad.

With a large-scale security operation under way in the capital, US and Iraqi forces are fanning out into a violent belt of small towns around the city in a bid to track down insurgent car bomb factories.

The urgency of the mission was underlined on Monday, when two suicide truck bombers and a gang of gunmen assaulted and partially demolished a US outpost northeast of the capital, killing nine soldiers and wounding 20 more.

US command said it had identified a suspect killed northwest of Baghdad on April 20 as Muhammad Abdullah Abbas al-Issawi, also known as Abu Akram and Abu Abd al-Sattar, the Al-Qaeda “security emir” for the east of Anbar province.

“Coalition forces were conducting operations targeting associates of a known senior leader within Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” the military statement said.

“During the operation the terrorists engaged ground forces with small arms fire. Coalition forces used appropriate self-defence measures and engaged the armed men, killing two and detaining one,” it said.

According to the statement, explosive vests were found at the scene and “intelligence reports also indicate that his VBIED (car bomb) cell used 12- to 13-year-old children as VBIED drivers.”

This is the nature of our enemy, using Iraqi children as a weapon against their own people. These are the people that Reid thinks are winning the war. These are the people that Reid and Schumer are empowering to bring their fight to us. And how do Reid and Schumer view the results of us losing the war? As you saw yourself, glee since it means more power for them.