Poll: 1 in 5 Democrats Say World Better Off If U.S. Loses in Iraq

Today Fox News came out with a shocking poll that found one out of every five Democrats feel as though the world would be better off if the U.S. loses in Iraq. In other words one of five Democrats are not rooting for our troops to succeed there, plain and simple.

Democrats and Anti Military Statements

In the wake of the Rush Limbaugh controversy a lot of us have been thinking about the real offensive statements, made by actual policy-makers, about our troops. Many talk radio shows, and cable news networks, have been playing sound bites of these types of comments for the last week. I've been meaning to compile them for a blog, although fortunately for me because there are quite of few of them, Powerlineblog.com has beaten me to the punch.

Harry Reid (on "the surge"):

Now I believe, myself, that the secretary of state, the secretary of defense and you have to make your own decision as to what the president knows: that this war is lost, that the surge is not accomplishing anything.

Dick Durbin (on Guantanamo):

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Hillary Clinton (to General Petraeus):

[T]oday you are testifying about the current status of our policy in Iraq and the prospects of that policy. It is a policy that you have been ordered to implement by the president. And you have been made the de facto spokesmen for what many of us believe to be a failed policy.

Despite what I view as your rather extraordinary efforts in your testimony both yesterday and today, I think that the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief.

John Kerry:

Education -- if you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well," said Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat. "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Charles Schumer (on "the surge"):

[L]et me be clear, the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn’t that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here.

Charles Rangel:

If there’s anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment. If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.

John Murtha (on Haditha):

It's much worse than reported in Time magazine. There was no fire fight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. And that's what the report is going to tell.

Now, you can imagine the impact this is going to have on those troops for the rest of their lives and for the United States in our war and our effort in trying to win the hearts and minds.

Edward Kennedy

Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management.

John Kerry:

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.

Barack Obama:

We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.