GRIM MILESTONE IN IRAQ...

.... 2000 KILLED since war began. Each death is sad. But none were in vain.

Predictably, the Leftie Dems are wringing their hands and ponying up to the well of the Senate, for instance, and proffering phony laments - as if they really cared. Durbin, Kennedy. Reid. Lautenberg. Scum. If they DID really care, then they wouldn't have voted AGAINST nearly every increase in the defense budget from the year 1! And all their BS about there "not being a exit strategy" is too sickening for me to stomach! THERE IS AN EXIT STRATEGY, YOU IDIOTS: training the Iraqis to take over; as Bush has said OVER AND OVER AND OVER: "as they stand up, we will stand down." It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Here's what the president said earlier (hat tip KJ):

Some observers also claim that America would be better off by cutting our losses and leaving Iraq now. This is a dangerous illusion, refuted by a simple question: Would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people, and its resources? Having removed a dictator who hated free peoples, we will not stand by as a new set of killers, dedicated to the destruction of our country, seizes control of Iraq by violence.

I'm with him. We gotta stay until the JOB IS DONE.

AND HERE'S SOME PERSPECTIVE: We have lost 2000 of our bravest and best in Iraq - IN 2.5 YEARS. On 9/11 we lost 3000 - in 2.5 hours. NOT CONNECTED!? Sure they are; 9/11 changed everything. After 9/11, sensible people realized that we couldn't tolerate the kinds of risks we'd tolerated BEFORE 9/11. ESPECIALLY with regard to Saddam and islamoterror. Never forget, that Saddam said the following words to our Ambassador in 1991:

"We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you."

No sane, responsible and patriotic president could have ignroed that statement or let that statement fall by the wayside in the post-9/11 world. Bush didn't. I frankly - AND SADLY - do not trust a single Democrat to be resolute enough to make the same kind of tough call in the future. In spite of the overwhelming evidence that the strategy is working: Iraq has a constitution - in RECORD TIME; and since the Iraq War, Libya caved, Lebanon is freed, and Syria is on the ropes. All good. All worth the sacrifice of our best and bravest. Their sacrifices are reshaping the world, making it better and freer. And that will lead to a better peace for all the world in the years ahead. God Bless them all, and may God Bless their familes - and the United States of America.

MORE HERE (hat tip Michele Malkin).