The Democrat appeasement hounds are in full cry thinking they have the president up a tree, cornered and powerless to save himself and his party from being chewed to bits.

They had better take a second look - that’s not a tree he’s climbing, but the polls - where he’s quickly moving up into a position that will all but guarantee a crushing loss for defeatist Democrats in the 2006 House and Senate races.

In what may prove to be the most gigantic political miscalculation of all time, the Democrats and their eager allies in the Marxist media bet all their marbles on the idea that President Bush’s policies in the war on terrorism are his Achilles’ heel and would help them to win control of Congress in the 2006 elections.

They also eagerly jumped on the revelations that the U.S. had monitored communications between al Qaeda terrorists abroad and al Qaeda agents in the U.S., believing that the public would be angered by the operation which they and their media allies were falsely portraying as an assault on the civil rights of all Americans.

Boy, were they ever wrong. According to the authoritative Rasmussen poll:

A December 23, 2005 poll showed that fully 50 percent of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as president. That’s up six points since the president’s speech on Sunday night. It’s also the first time since July that the president’s job approval rating has reached the 50 percent mark. He earns approval from 81 percent of Republicans, 23 percent of Democrats, and 42 percent of those not affiliated with either major political party.

Another poll on December 28, 2005 showed that a whopping 64 percent of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. Just 23 percent disagree. That view is shared by 51 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of those not affiliated with either major political party.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans say they are following the NSA story somewhat or very closely and only 26 percent believe President Bush is the first to authorize a program like the one currently in the news. Forty-eight percent say he is not while 26 percent are not sure.

Ask most Americans if they agree with such defeatists as Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the majority of her far-left colleagues that the U.S. should cut and run in Iraq, and the great majority give a resounding “no.” They want our troops to come home, but not until the job is done. But Mrs. Pelosi continues to stupidly put her party in a position of opposite that of the majority of the voters.

Their misjudgment of the mood and temper of the electorate – the absurd notion that they could override the patriotism of the American people by turning them against their president in a time of war – has put them in a position that can only be seen as favorable to an enemy sworn to kill us all.

Even more incredible is the open alliance between the Democrats and the Marxist media, which have proven to be a reliable mouthpiece for our enemies.

The New York Times prints one story after another that gives aid and comfort to al Qaeda, revealing top-secret operations meant to protect Americans from another 9/11. Instead of demanding that the leakers be brought to justice as they did in the case of Valerie Plame, the Democrats jump on the bandwagon and begin agitating for Congressional hearings that would reveal even more secrets to our enemies.

It’s becoming apparent that the only way to keep the Times and the Democrats happy would be to appoint al Qaeda representatives to sit in on White House and NSA strategy sessions to monitor all U.S. intelligence operations to assure that the terrorists’ civil liberties would be protected and they would be kept abreast of our war plans.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561

New York City is verging on chaos, with an illegal transit-worker strike all but paralyzing the city and costing its economy an estimated $400 million a day. Some experts believe the ultimate cost to the city will be over $1 billion.

From all reports, Mayor Bloomberg is standing tough, facing off against Transport Workers Union President Roger Toussaint and 33,700 striking employees. Yet despite the mayor’s feistiness the strike goes on, proving that being tough in this instance is not enough.

Said the mayor: “It is costing people their jobs. It will cost billions in lost economic activity. It is robbing people of their opportunities to earn a living and provide for their families . . . It is costing students their opportunity to learn. It will make it harder for our police officers, firefighters and EMS to get where they need to go.

“We live in a country of laws where there can be severe consequences for those who break them. Roger Toussaint and the TWU have shamefully decided they don’t care about the people they work for and that they have no respect for the law,” he added. “The leadership of the TWU has thuggishly turned their backs on New York City, and disgraced the noble concept of public service.”

Right on, but not nearly enough.

Look at it this way: these striking workers are creating havoc, subjecting their fellow New Yorkers to economically devastating consequences. Many workers in the city are paid only when they work, and many of them can’t get to work thus robbing of them of any income. Many New Yorkers are being forced to walk long distances to get to their jobs in bitterly cold weather. The streets are jammed with traffic as New Yorkers with cars face monumental traffic jams. And all this is happening in the week before Christmas, the very time many merchants need to earn the profits that help keep them going year long.

And City Comptroller Bill Thompson warns that if the strike lasts a week it will cost New York’s economy $1.6 billion.

The people who have done this - the union bosses and those 33,700 transit workers - have lost any claim they have for job security. They have betrayed the city and the people of New York in the worst possible way and they no longer deserve to be on the city’s payroll.

And it’s some payroll. In a city where the average wage earner makes $45,000, subway operators earned an average of $62,438 a year, including overtime, under the previous three-year contract, according to the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Train conductors averaged $53,000, subway booth clerks $50,720, and bus drivers earned an average of $62,551.

Add to that the fact that these workers can retire at full pension at the age of 55 in a nation where the average retirement age is 65 or higher. That pension program, by the way, is a ticking time bomb down the road that threatens to bankrupt the MTA.

The MTA has offered the union a three-year contract with raises of 3 percent, 4 percent and 3.5 percent through 2008. The transit agency also agreed to retain the union’s full pension retirement eligibility age at 55, on condition that new employees contribute 6 percent of their annual earnings for 10 years to help finance future pensions. So far the union has spurned all such offers.

It’s time for Mayor Bloomberg stand up like a real leader and to do what my father, Ronald Reagan did during the air traffic controller’s strike that threatened to shut down all air traffic - fire all 33,700 of them and fire them now.

The mayor should listen to New Yorkers such as a man named Gary who told CBS News that Bloomberg “should do what Reagan did in the ‘80s when he fired all the air traffic controllers for going on strike. I’m sure in times like these there will be plenty of New Yorkers who’d line up for jobs.”

And if more are needed let the city round up all those illegal aliens living there and put them to work in the transit system.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561.

Michael Sitto said it best. Sitto, a La Mesa, Calif. expatriate Iraqi who works for the U.S. Navy told reporters as he prepared to cast his absentee vote in the Iraqi elections: “It is a great day for the Iraqi people. This is the start of a new democratic system, a democratic country in the Middle East,” he said. “At the same time, there has been a great sacrifice by the American people.”

And, he added, “We don’t want to lose sight of that.”

Too bad the Democrats and their Marxist allies here in the U.S. can’t see the miracle taking place in Iraq where for the third time, in spite of real and present dangers to life and limb, huge numbers of Iraqis voted in a free election.

Like Sitto, Iraquis are rejoicing, and all Americans should be shouting Hallelujah along with them, because the miracle that is happening there is taking place because we made it happen.

For the very first time in the Middle East a Muslim nation is creating a democratic republic – the people of an Arab nation are deciding for themselves the kind of government they want and which of their fellow Iraqis they want to run that government. For the first time, the people of a Muslim nation are acting like free citizens instead of as subjects of an autocratic regime.

This is a trailblazing development and it is born and bred out of our own history. The very idea that a sovereign people could be self-governing was unheard of, yet that is exactly what the founding fathers insisted when they set up a constitutional republic and created a system of laws and not of men.

Today, confronted by the reality of an Iraqi electorate setting up a constitution that substitutes the rule of law for the rule of a dictator, and voting for candidates to serve in a national legislature, liberal Democrats sneer at the astounding progress democracy has made in Iraq. They predict that all sorts of terrible problems will arise and doom Iraq’s hopes for a free and stable government.

Of course there will be problems. Putting together a conglomeration of groups with widely divergent ideas and modes of living is a tough row to hoe, and our own history provides many examples of the obstacles involved in the process. It took ten years for America just to reach the point where it was possible to craft a constitution.

In the wake of the American Revolution, the best the founders could do was to operate under the weak and inefficient Articles of Confederation. Finally, ten years later, they met to create a binding Constitution. It took two years for Congress to adopt the document and another two years of contentious debate before the required majority of states approved the Constitution of the United States.

And that was just the beginning. It took a long time for some of the states to accept the idea that they were part of a national union and not individual nations. Some of the disputes actually involved armed resistance, such as the so-called Whiskey Rebellion. Later, the nation split apart over the issue of slavery and a terrible civil war broke out.

In the end, however, we have survived for well over two centuries and today the United States is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the face of the earth. And because we set an example for all the world to follow over 200 years ago, the people of Iraq have today taken a giant step to follow in our footsteps.

Instead of walking around with the usual gloom and doom written all over their faces, liberals should be leaping with joy over the results of December 15, 2005. It is a time for rejoicing, even if it means that Howard Dean, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha and all the rest of the “hate-Bush brigade” will have to admit that President Bush knew what he was doing all along.

One Iraqi voter quoted in a story on the Drudge Report had a few words for the cut-and-run crowd: “Anybody who doesn’t appreciate what America has done and President Bush [has done] let them go to hell.”

That works for me.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561.

Sixty-four years ago today, December 7, the United States was stabbed in the back and 2,338 Americans were killed in a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.

Last week, American servicemen and women serving in Iraq, and those here at home recovering from terrible wounds were also stabbed in the back. In 1941 it was the Japanese wielding the knife; last week it was Howard Dean and John Kerry and fellow members of the dominant left wing of the Democrat Party who plunged the dagger in America’s back.

Dean wielded the knife during a Texas radio interview when he had the gall to declare that the “idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong,” thereby telling the parents of those brave men and women who were killed fighting for the country, or the American troops now facing death every day in Iraq, that it was all a waste of time.

In my book that’s just plain treason and I told my radio listeners that Dean should be arrested and hung for treason, or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war.

But Dean wasn’t finished. He went on to say: “This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, ‘just another year, just stay the course, we’ll have a victory.’ Well, we didn’t have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we

were too stubborn to recognize what was happening.”

Aside from the fact that Dean’s arithmetic is off - some 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, not 25,000 - we didn’t lose a war we were winning on the battlefield because we were stubborn. We lost it because members of Dean’s party in Congress de-funded the war effort and demanded that we do what he and his defeatist party are once again demanding – that the United States cut and run.

I have a suggestion for Howard Dean. He should do what I did a week ago – visit the amputees at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He can try to tell them that the limbs they sacrificed on the field of battle were sacrificed in vain – thrown away in a war that we cannot win. I also suggest that when he does so he had better do what he wants the U.S. to do – cut and run for his life.

Then we have the junior Senator from Massachusetts, Sen. John F. Kerry, who is becoming a serial backstabber. Kerry, you will remember, stabbed his Vietnam comrades in the back when he accused them of committing atrocities during that war. Well, he just did it again on CBS Sunday, telling Bob Schieffer of “Face the Nation” there was no reason for U.S. soldiers to continue “terrorizing” Iraqi children, and saying: “And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the – of – the historical customs, religious customs.”

He then suggested that it should be the Iraqi soldiers doing the terrorism: “Whether you like it or not,” he said, “Iraqis should be doing that.”

Perhaps the Senator from Hanoi should take one of those senatorial junkets to Iraq and tell our courageous men and women over there, facing death and dismemberment every day, that they aren’t really there to help guarantee the Iraqi people freedom, but to commit acts of terrorism.

Then we have the Nancy Pelosis and Barbara Boxers and the rest of the bug-out-of-Iraq brigade sending a clear message to the suicide bombers and other terrorist thugs to just bide their time and wait until their party manages to sabotage the war effort and the U.S. withdraws with the job half done. Then they can come in and show the world the real meaning of terrorism as they enslave and brutalize the Iraqi people.

What these people are doing is undermining the morale of our troops and giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war. There’s a word for that – it’s called treason.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561

I was in Washington Wednesday and while there I visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center and spoke with a number of amputees disabled while defending us in Iraq.

I was fascinated by the attitude of these brave men and women who have sacrificed so much in our behalf. Their outlook on life is uplifting. You see nobody with tears in their eyes. Every single one of them has a positive attitude that is absolutely inspiring. One young man to whom I spoke had just been accepted for admission to a university in Washington, D.C. where he plans to study international business. The fact that he lost an arm in Iraq has not deterred him one little bit. He has his eyes on then future.

I saw so many men and women missing arms and legs, and every one of them had positive outlooks, largely thanks to the way they are being cared for and nurtured at Walter Reed. I was also deeply impressed by how the Department of Veterans Affairs is working with them and contributing to the positive attitude the vets display.

I was deeply impressed by those who despite their disability expressed a desire to go back and serve with their comrades still fighting in Iraq. And I spoke to one young man who is struggling to get well enough so he’ll be able to be there to greet his unit when it comes home from Iraq. These are men and women who make you proud to be part of a nation that produces such magnificent people.

I couldn’t help thinking about all the things being done at Walter Reed for these heroes who deserve all that a grateful nation can do for them - things that are just phenomenal and have never before been done for disabled veterans of past wars.

Thanks to incredible advances in technology, many seriously disabled veterans are being brought back into the mainstream of life where they can do just about everything they could do before losing limbs. Many are overcoming disabilities that would depress most of us were we to suffer from, yet they refuse to give up the struggle to live as near-normal lives as possible.

A couple of weeks ago my wife Colleen ran in the New York Marathon. Participating in that marathon in wheelchair events where a lot of amputees. I watched all of them cross the finish line while I waited for Colleen to finish, and I met two of those I had seen in the marathon during my visit to Walter Reed.

I can’t help recalling the post-World War II movie “The Best Years of Our Lives,”‘ where the question was posed as to how those disabled on the battlefield would be treated on their return to civilian life and how they would cope with their disabilities. In those days, prosthesis - the creation of artificial arms and legs - was only in its infancy and although the artificial limbs were useful, they left a lot to be desired when it came to performing the most rudimentary tasks.

As a result, in those days, the transition to civilian life for the disabled was difficult and I hope and pray that this won’t be the case with Iraq war veterans. I hope that we in normal society will be able to be as positive in our outlook concerning them as they are about themselves. After all, with the marvels of technology, most of these heroic men and women will be able to do just about everything the non-disabled can do.

It is incumbent upon every one of us to look upon these veterans with the respect they have earned by their service to the nation and the losses they suffered to safeguard our freedoms. We must treat them as fellow human beings who made great sacrifices for us - and not simply as amputees, not as people with a disability - and consider what they can contribute to society whether it be in the workplace, or in homes as husbands or wives, or wherever it might be. They need and want our respect, not our pity. Winning that respect might be the biggest war they face, and it is up to us to see they win it.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561

Just in time for Thanksgiving, warm-hearted Republicans in the House of Representatives have come up with a genuine turkey for the nation’s taxpayers to swallow – a bill to ladle out a whopping $830 million to millions of Americans to pay for converting their TV sets to receive high-tech digital transmissions.

A bill passed on Friday before the members ran off to spend Thanksgiving at home and brag about how they are cutting spending (while bringing home the federal bacon to their districts), requires TV broadcasters to switch to all-digital transmissions by December 2008.

Some 21 million households are dependent on free, over-the-air TV, and will need converter boxes to keep receiving their television signals after the switch to all-digital TV transmission. The Associated Press says that cable and satellite customers will not be affected.

In the House, Republicans claimed they don’t expect wealthier Americans to request coupons for the boxes, so they expect the $830 million would cover those homes that really need help.

In one fell swoop, these generous members of the party dedicated to restraining needless government spending have created a whole new category of welfare clients – people with the soon-to-be-outdated analog TV sets who are digitally impaired and unable to cough up the estimated $50 to $60 cost for a converter box. So the government will fork over $40 and the TV owners will have to come up with the other $10 or $20.

But it gets worse. With the transition from analog TV to digital TV three years away from reality, are there really people who can’t afford to set aside about $7 a year for the next three years so they’ll have the money to pay their share of the subsidized price of a $60 converter box by December 2008?

House Democrats appear not to think so. They want more money. According to the AP, Democrats are complaining that the GOP subsidy for converter boxes is too stingy. It would only pay for about 10 million households, half the number of homes that would need them. Moreover, consumer groups say the $830 million would cover only about a quarter of homes.

“The funding level provided is woefully inadequate to ensure that consumers aren’t forced to reach into their wallets to facilitate the government’s mandated transition to digital television,” Jeannine Kenney of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports whined to the AP.

But the House Republicans and their Democrat colleagues are mere pikers compared to their opposite numbers over in the Republican-controlled Senate. The AP reported that Senators want to lay out all of $3 billion to subsidize the cost of TV set conversion.

Who are these people? Where did they get the idea that every American has a right to digital television?

I’ve been trying to find a clause in the Constitution that decrees that the federal government is responsible for providing the kind of infotainment now available from television. I can’t find it anywhere in that hallowed document.

My father used to say, “When they pay you not to work, why work?” By the same token, when they pay you to watch TV why pay for it yourself?

Happy Thanksgiving, America.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561

He’s battered and bruised and his enemies are coming at him from all sides, and if he wants to survive, President Bush is going to have to put on the gloves and come out slugging.

For months he has sat back and allowed the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media to portray him as dishonest, incompetent and a liar; and until the other day he had said not a word in his own defense.

I attribute his refusal to get down in the gutter where they live and slug it out with his detractors to two things: seemingly bad advice from his White House staff, and the fact that he is just too darn nice to want to strike back.

To get back on his feet he needs to do two things: clean house and get rid of the staffers who have served him so poorly, and listen to a bit of wisdom from the late baseball coach Leo Durocher - “Nice guys finish last.”

With respect to his White House staff, I have never seen an administration where nobody is willing to fall on their sword for their boss. They sit around and allow the president to fall on his own sword, and also leak unfavorable information about what’s going on inside the White House to make themselves look good to the Bush-hating media.

Nobody at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. takes responsibility for anything. On Capitol Hill a lot of the Republicans are running for cover, trying to dissociate themselves from Bush. Yet the president doesn’t fire anybody in the White House, and he doesn’t veto any of the costly junk legislation Congress sends up for his signature.

Recall what was said about John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign. He was roundly criticized for failing to respond to the charges made against his war record by the Swift Boat vets. He thought the whole thing would go away, so he never tried to answer the charges until it was too late and the damage had been done.

Now we have the president making the same mistake, refusing until now to counterattack against the Democrats for their totally false accusations that he lied the U.S. into the Iraq war. They’ve been making these phony charges for months on end, yet we heard not a word from George Bush in response, even though the record proves the Democrats are lying, and lying through their teeth. And because he ignored them, the Democrats continued to dip deeper and deeper into the slime pit to cast more and more mud at George Bush

As a result of his inaction and the failure of his staff to man the guns and fire back, one of the most honest, decent, Godly human beings in America has allowed himself to be painted as a corrupt and lying politician who sent Americans to die in an unjust war brought on by his alleged falsifications of the facts.

The dishonesty of the Democrats is appalling. Their slanders of this good and decent man make slime are made to look pure. It is also appalling, however, that their lies and slanders went for so long unanswered. The fault for that lies solely with George Bush. His staff, no doubt, played a large part in that failure, but he let them get away with it.

The fact is that because of his deep religious belief and because he is a nice guy, he has become his own worst enemy. He is unwilling to bring down the axe when he needs to. It’s said that he has a hot temper and tends to scream and yell at his staff. He needs to go further. He needs to fire the whole lot.

Remember George Tenet, the Clinton holdover CIA chief who assured him that it was a “slam dunk” - that Saddam Hussein had tons of weapons of mass destruction? Bush should have fired Tenet, but he instead he allowed him to retire and gave him the Medal of Freedom.

It’s time for President Bush to pick up his sword and adopt a policy of “no more nice guy.” In politics as in sports, nice guys really do finish last.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561

In the Iraq war there are three strategies: win, lose or draw. Our choice is to win.

When my dad was asked what his Cold War strategy was, he said that it was simple: “We win, they lose.”

That is the only strategy in war that makes any sense. You don’t go to war to end up in a tie game. If you have a single ounce of common sense and courage, you go to war to win and you do whatever you have to do to come out victorious. To do less is to betray those who died fighting the war.

Now thanks to the Democrats, most of whom voted to go to war, we are seeing a new strategy: win, lose or run. My party is the one that wants to win. The Democrats want to run.

They don’t call it running; they call it having an “exit strategy.” And they want a date certain for running for the exit. Maybe they are too wound up in their desperate attempt to work out a strategy for winning back control of Congress to understand what kind of a message setting a date for withdrawal sends to the enemy. Perhaps they don’t understand that with a date set, the enemy has only to hang in there until we leave, thus giving them a free hand to subjugate the Iraqi people.

In a speech October 6, President Bush spoke about the insanity of setting a deadline for withdrawal. “I recognize that Americans want our troops to come home as quickly as possible,” he said. “So do I. Some contend that we should set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces. Let me explain why that would be a serious mistake. Setting an artificial timetable would send the wrong message to the Iraqis - who need to know that America will not leave before the job is done. It would send the wrong message to our troops - who need to know that we are serious about completing the mission they are risking their lives to achieve. And it would send the wrong message to the enemy - who would know that all they have to do is to wait us out. We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed - and not a day longer.”

And he spelled out his strategy: “As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.”

Today, in his Veterans Day speech in Pennsylvania, he echoed my dad, pledging, “We will never back down, we will never give in, we will never accept anything less than complete victory. So we will fight them there we will fight them across the world - and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won.”

The Democrats who want to run have another strategy. They want to convince the American people that the president lied to them about Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction

In his speech today he lashed back at the Democrats for their shameful and utterly untruthful allegations that he lied us into a war, saying that “it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.” It has been a response too long in coming and I hope it marks the point where President Bush goes on the offensive against his enemies here at home.

Noting that “some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war,” he said such critics know full well that “a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions, citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction.”

He ended by warning: “The stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges.”

Just as it is totally irresponsible for the Democrats to call for a retreat from Iraq and call running a “strategy.”

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561.

It’s desperation time for the Democrats. Dejected because prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald didn’t indict just about everybody in the White House and confirm their fantasies about lies that were never told, they are demanding that the president apologize for I’m not quite sure what.

Their cardboard hero, Joe Wilson, runs around claiming that the president used 16 words to lie us into war when he said in his state of the Union speech: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Pay attention to that. He didn’t say that Saddam tried to buy African uranium – he said the Brits said he did. In other words, that statement was true. The British government did tell us that Saddam Hussein sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Moreover, they still insist that Saddam sought to buy yellowcake from Africa. Moreover, the French and German intelligence services also agreed with that claim.

In the run-up to the war every major Western intelligence agency also agreed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The Democrats who voted to invade Iraq all saw the same evidence about WMDs that the president saw, and they accepted it just as he did. Where are the lies here?

So, from what I can gather, the liberals who run the Democrat party want the president to lie by saying he lied, and want him to apologize.

Okay, let’s play their game and go through the looking glass into liberal wonderland. Let’s say that everything the liberal media, and the liberal, pundits and the liberal Democrats and poor disoriented Joe Wilson are saying is the absolute truth. The President of the United States lied us into war in Iraq. So how do we set things right?

Obviously we have to apologize to the Iraqis for having invaded their country. Wouldn’t we be obliged to put that statue of Saddam Hussein back up and reinstall Saddam in his marble palaces from which we unjustly evicted him and allow him once again to be Iraq’s absolute dictator? Shouldn’t we apologize for having driven him from power and then hand him a ton of money to rebuild his all his palaces, finance the reconstruction of his country and his torture and rape rooms, and re-establish his secret police?

Let’s say we did all that to right the terrible wrong we did to Iraq by allowing ourselves to be deceived into attacking them? What would we expect to happen?

I think the answer is obvious. Saddam would systematically murder, maim, rape or imprison the millions of Iraqis who cooperated with the coalition forces in trying to democratize their nation. Then he’d torture and imprison or execute millions more for having voted in a new constitution and a new government. And he’d be back in Niger tying to buy yellowcake and bribing UN officials with “oil for food” money.

If we were egregiously wrong in invading Iraq shouldn’t we pay for our mistake by putting everything we destroyed back together?

One more thing. While we’re wandering through liberal wonderland, let’s think the way liberals think. They believe that it is the right thing to do to take from those who have, skim a lot off the top to finance the liberal bureaucracy, and give it to the have-nots, in small doses, of course. You have to keep them dependent on the Democrat Party. The more you take from the haves - who you think became haves by dishonest means (you know, by working for it) - the more you’ll have to expand your bureaucracy and ladle out more goodies to the have-nots living on your liberal plantation. And since we owe so much to the Iraqis for having unjustly attacked them, should we not expand our generosity to them and bring them onto the progressive plantation?

I’m sure Saddam would go along. After all, his party, the Baathist party, was a socialist party, just like today’s Democrat Party. I guess that’s why they feel guilty over having helped get rid of him.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561.

It’s time for a good old-fashioned back-alley slugfest with the president and the Republican party taking on the liberal Democrats and flailing away with everything they’ve got.

President Bush can both recover from the beating he took from his own conservative base as a result of the Harriet Miers fiasco, and establish himself as the kind of warrior the nation needs at a time when the liberals are fighting for their political lives by using every nasty, below-the-belt weapon in their arsenal of slander and deceit. He can deliver the knockout blow and drive these scoundrels out of the political arena forever. He has the power and the ability to be the warrior hero if he’ll use them against his enemies and ours.

He can rejuvenate both his own fortunes and those of his party simply by stepping into the ring and nominating for the Supreme Court a staunch conservative in the mold of Antonin Scalia, daring the Senate liberals to try and block his choice. They can’t - he has the votes he needs to win this fight - but he needs to stop trying to placate the very people who hate and revile him.

For generations the American people have proven over and over again that they love a man who fights for what he believes, even when the odds seem to be against him. They’ll get behind him and give him their full support. On the other hand, they have no respect for anyone who seems namby-pamby about defending what they know is right and just and good.

George Bush is in the White House because the people in a huge majority of states believed he represents the values and virtues they hold dear. They have every right to expect him to do everything in his power to defend those virtues and values – and they expect him to do battle and show no mercy to those who oppose everything they hold dear.

His foes deride those who support America’s traditional values, calling them “right-wing extremists.” He needs to stand up and shout that if being a right-wing extremist means being pro-life, adhering to the Constitution of the United States as it is written and not as some wooly-headed judge wants it to mean, being pro-military and for smaller government and less spending, then he is proud to be a right-wing extremist as defined by the socialist anti-democratic liberals on and off Capitol Hill.

He won election promising to reform Social Security before it is allowed to collapse. He needs to ignore those who say that fight is already lost, and continue to battle for a cause that must be won if the system is to survive.

He promised to reform the tax system that is both unfair and needlessly burdensome. He needs to stick to his guns and keep firing away until he has won the support of a majority of Americans.

In short, George Bush needs to go to the mat on every issue, never giving in and always fighting even when the odds appear to be stacked against him.

This nation exists only because George Washington and his army, vastly outnumbered by the greatest military force on the face of the earth and repeatedly defeated by it in battle after battle, refused to give in. Washington and his army were fighters, and in the end they won because they kept up the fight even when all the odds were stacked against them.

George Bush stands at a crossroads. His standing in the polls is at its lowest point. He has just suffered a serious blow as a result of the Miers affair. Like Washington at Valley Forge, he seems headed for ignominious defeat, carrying his party down with him.

Washington risked everything by going into a fight that seemed hopeless, yet he won a great victory at Trenton and reversed his fortunes and those of his army. He fought and he won because he believed in his cause. And in the end, his cause triumphed.

George Bush now faces his own Valley Forge. It’s time for him to cross his Delaware and take the fight to the enemy. If he does he won’t be alone. As I said, America loves a fighter.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561