Consider the outcome

Michael Goodwin writes that it's too late for Bush to rally public support for the war. I hope he's as right as the media have been about everything else."

It's easy to toss off opinions like this, but harder to defend the result. This Wall Street Journal editorial is more sobering. I think that any responsible person, Democrat or Republican, taking Bush's place would have a tough time justifying bowing to the demands of the idiot left like Cindy Sheehan. And, no, turning it over to the U.N. is not acceptable.

From Hugh Hewitt's discussion with Christopher Hitchens this afternoon, there may be some members of the MSM who are starting to realize that their relentless attacks on Bush and negative coverage of events in Iraq may really be encouraging the terrorists and dragging out this war. People like the Democrat media hounds in the Senate don't seem to have ever had a thought about what would happen in that region if we yanked our troops. We've still got troops in Kosovo, for crying out loud, but nobody's whining about that.

Via Instapundit, comes this report on death statistics for the military from a number of past presidencies. What's impressive is how small the number of deaths above the background rate coming from normal peacetime operations is. I wonder what Cindy Sheehan (soon to be portrayed in a movie by Susan Sarandon*) would be doing if her son had died in a vehicle accident in California.

*I hope she gets that simpering, lispy, vacant manner of speech Sheehan has when she mouths her antiwar cliches. Of course, then it would be a parody, and Mother Sheehan might realize how really moronic she and the rest of her movement appear.