Voters Must Beware of Republicans' Terrorism Trap

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Voters Must Beware of Republicans' Terrorism Trap
Sunday , August 13, 2006
By Susan Estrich

LOS ANGELES — This is not about the war in Iraq. It has nothing to do with Joe Lieberman. This is the Republican trap. Don’t fall in.

“They have tried to keep it together -- they have to make it one in people’s minds in order to cover the strategic error of Iraq,” says James Webb, Democratic Senate candidate from Virginia, and former member of the Reagan administration. From the very beginning, the Republican slip of hand has been to convince people that the war in Iraq was the answer to 9/11.

It wasn’t. It isn’t. It never was. It isn’t the answer to British hijackers either. This really has nothing to do with the war in Iraq. It needs to be said over and over.

It’s the distraction from focusing on airline safety, on Usama bin Laden, on America’s true enemies. It’s one of the reasons we are so hated around the world. “The war in Iraq had nothing to do with the war against international terrorism, or very little to do with the war on terrorism,” Webb says in interviews. “It has distracted our attention, it has pulled our forces in, and we are now in a situation where we have 135,000 on the ground, which affects our ability to do a lot of things that we would be able to do otherwise.” ...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208189,00.html