There's a War On

It turns out that the NSA has eavesdropped on more conversations than orginally thought. Democrats are up in arms and want Bush impeached. No one else seems to care. Possibly one reason is that legal scholars can argue the case either way. The fact that Bush has not backed down indicates that he thinks he is in the right.

According to this poll, 64% of the country supports wiretaps on suspected terrorists. That's bad news for the pro-impeachment crowd. Worse news for Howard Dean, 51% of Democrats are in favor of the wiretaps.

Many Democrats have spent the last four years insisting that we are not part of an international war with militant Islam. They have spent the last three years insisting that Iraq is not part of the War on Terror (which doesn't exists, anyway). In an interview with Newsweek, the DailyKos's founder, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, has this to say about the 2006 election:

Is the Iraq war the key campaign issue, or something else?
I think as long as Iraq is on the plate it is the issue. You don’t see a lot of talk about the war in the national media. Six people get killed in an IED [improvised explosive device] attack and it’s put on page 37. But every one of those casualties becomes a big media event for local press, and that’s why people are turning against the war. You go to places like Montana and when a local son gets killed, it is an all-week news event—front page on the day he is killed. They talk to his parents, his high-school coach. They cover the funeral. For a long time it was just us bloggers opposing the war, but that’s changing.

How will the Democrats use the war issue?
This is a little frustrating for me. Here’s a perfect opportunity for Democrats to have led on an issue, and they haven’t. The problem is that part of the Democratic caucus thinks it’s manly and tough to be for the war. They are afraid to basically state what the reality on the ground is.

Here again is a Democratic consultant calling for surrender in Iraq to the terrorists. With most of the country recognizing that we are at war and that wartime measures are needed, how will the Democrats win any elections?

BTW, Zúniga needs to get out more. Every paper I've seen has the death toll in Iraq on the front page every day. How is this not in the national media?