PROVE IT: Before the Iraq war, the United States suffered a series of terrorist attacks: the bombing and destruction of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000, and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Since the Iraq war started, there have not been any successful terrorist attacks against the United States. That doesn't mean the threat has diminished because of the Iraq war, but it does place the burden of proof on those who argue that it has increased. -- Robert Kagan, Washingtonpost.com, 9/26/06

[The proof is in the numbers, and I don't think we have enough hard numbers to declare how the Iraq war affects the picture, for good or ill. Look at the terrorist headcount, for example -- who knows what it is? But we can make some assumptions... Subsequent attacks: 0. Increase in terrorist headcount: X. If subsequent attacks were, say 3, I think it is clear the terrorist headcount would be significantly greater than X, solely because the illusion of terrorist WINS is more attractive to potential recruits than terrorist LOSSES. People naturally gravitate to the winning side. I don't see evidence that terrorism has a winning side at this point. In terms of numbers, known or unknown, where is the evidence of increased threat? -- Kirt]

FIRST LADY? President Clinton lost his temper in an interview with Chris Wallace. He might not be the pleasant and polite first lady Hillary needs after all. -- Jay Leno

WHITEWASH THIS: The bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the will to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the will to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror. -- Byron York

WINNING TERRORIST STRATEGIES

Our enemies in the Middle East have learned three important ways to win the current war and those of the future.

1. Use terrorism on civilians to frighten them and to break down their resolve.. . .

2. Control the media to better distribute propaganda so as to further manipulate the civilian population and also lower morale of their troops. . . .

3. Infiltrate American schools, colleges and political organizations to retrain as many youth as possible so that new generations sympathize with the Middle East problems and regard their own country as an imperial nation, interested only in dominating the world to gain control of oil and other riches. . . .

There will be a fourth strategy added to the other three in the future. This will happen when the terrorists have access to nuclear bombs.

-- Lee Ellis, opinioneditorial.com, 9/25/06

EXTINGUISHING THE LIGHT: A Western civilization that will not recognize the essential role that Judaism and Christianity played in its development and will not defend its faith in these religions and the right of other faiths to exist unthreatened, will fall victim to the irrationality and violence of Islam, and the light of reason will be turned off. -- Alan Caruba

ARMAGEDDON TIMELINE: Here is what al Qaeda says they will do if they succeed in driving us out of Iraq: The terrorist Zawahiri has said that al Qaeda will proceed with "several incremental goals. The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of Caliphate . . . The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. And the fourth stage: . . . the clash with Israel." -- George W. Bush, whitehouse.gov, 9/9/06

SUCKER-PUNCHED AND HEADED FOR A KNOCK-OUT: The Democrats' mistake --ironically, in a year all about Mr. Bush -- is obsessing on Mr. Bush. They've been sucker-punched by their own animosity. "The Democrats now are incapable of answering a question on policy without mentioning Bush six times," says pollster Kellyanne Conway. . . . Mr. Bush's White House loves what the Democrats are doing. They want the focus on him. -- Peggy Noonan, opinionjournal.com, 9/15/06

COST OF ALLOWING A NUCLEAR IRAN: In the region, Persian Iran will immediately become the hegemonic power in the Arab Middle East. Today it is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, non-nuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran will gain control of the most strategic region on the globe.Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini's ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map. -- Charles Krauthammer, townhall.com, 9/15/06

WAR-TIME POPULARITY: There has never been an unpopular winning war or a popular losing one. -- Peter Worthington

WHO IS DEADLIER? Of the two suicide cults America confronts, liberalism is by far the more lethal. -- Don Feder

FIGHT THE RIGHT ENEMY: On September 11, 2001, our guard was down. America vowed that morning that we would never let that happen again. And yet, after five years many of us have grown weary of maintaining our defenses. America is in danger of losing sight of the enemy. (Many of us already have.) We have become so distracted by the political fights over how to defend ourselves that we seem to have forgotten why we need to. Today would be a good time to stop bickering and remember that we are all Americans, and therefore all targeted by a resolute army of fanatical warriors. The enemy does not care if we are Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, believer or atheist. It just wants us defeated. Polls report that more than a third of Americans, and nearly half of New Yorkers, believe that our own government either orchestrated the attacks or deliberately allowed them to happen. Such insanity can only be spread in a society that has lost its bearings. We must refocus on our common enemy: the Islamic radicals who want to establish their own despotic empire and view us as the most important obstacle in their path. America was attacked five years ago by agents of radical Islam. Their successors are fighting us in Iraq and Afghanistan and awaiting their chance to wound us again on our own soil. That is not a fantasy. It is the world in which we all live. Despite discouragements and setbacks, America can win this new and challenging war. But only if we fight the right enemy. -- The New Hampshire Union Leader

PATRIOTIC . . . NOT: [I]t's time to face a hard cold fact: Militant Islam wants to kill us just because we're alive and don't believe as they do... Now, this threat is not just going to go away because we choose to ignore it... But some Americans, sadly, are not interested in victory. And yet they want us to believe that their behavior is Patriotic. Well, it's not. -- Rush Limbaugh

ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? Darwinism has freed our modern generation from faith. Humanity is purposeless. We're concoctions of impersonal forces in a meaningless universe. Just naked apes. Morality is out, ME is in, and there's no such thing as sin. So look how happy this godless philosophy has made us! The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. (Psalm 14:1) -- Don Martini, Let's Talk A Little Science, christinternational.org, 2004

HISTORY REPEATS: The parallels between the rise of fascism in pre-World War II Germany and the rise of Islamic fascism today are startling. And just as it was in the 1930's, the world is refusing to confront the growing danger. . . .So why is history repeating itself? Why can't we Americans wise up and see the Islamic fascist threat? I blame the news media first, and irresponsible politicians like Howard Dean second. . . . Americans are certainly entitled to debate the wisdom and effectiveness of the current campaign to defeat Islamic fascism, but defeat it we must. For if we don't, it is just a matter of time before more of us lie dead in the streets. Like Hitler and his evil ambitions of seven decades ago, the Jihadists of today are not going to stop until we make them stop. -- Bill O'Reilly, billoreilly.com, 9/7/06

BUSH AND LINCOLN

In April of 1861, in response to the firing on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve for 90 days. Lincoln had greatly underestimated the challenge of preserving the Union. . . .

By the summer of 1862, with thousands of Americans already dead or wounded and the hopes of a quick resolution to the war all but abandoned, three political factions had emerged. There were those who thought the war was too hard and would have accepted defeat by negotiating the end of the United States by allowing the South to secede. Second were those who urged staying the course by muddling through with a cautious military policy and a desire to be "moderate and reasonable" about Southern property rights, including slavery. . . .

By late summer, 1862, Lincoln agonizingly concluded that a third faction had the right strategy for victory. This group's strategy demanded reorganizing everything as needed, intensifying the war, and bringing the full might of the industrial North to bear until the war was won. . . .

The first and greatest lesson of the last five years parallels what Lincoln came to understand. The dangers are greater, the enemy is more determined, and victory will be substantially harder than we had expected in the early days after the initial attack. Despite how painful it would prove to be, Lincoln chose the road to victory. President Bush today finds himself in precisely the same dilemma Lincoln faced 144 years ago.

-- Newt Gingrich, opinionjournal.com, 9/7/06

IRANIAN SNARE: Iran has set a clever trap, and the United States has walked into it. Rather than a functioning government in Iraq, it has chaos and a triumphant Shiite community. The Americans cannot contain the chaos, and they cannot simply withdraw. Therefore, we can understand why Bush insists on holding his position indefinitely. He has been maneuvered in such a manner that he -- or a successor -- has no real alternatives. -- George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 9/6/06

WHY WE'RE DOOMED: 1) We found highly enriched uranium in IRAN and 2) Iran still exists. -- Jerubaal, 9/2/06

NUCLEAR MAD NO MORE: The real threat posed by Islamic fascism comes in the form of a nuclear device in the hands of a terrorist surrogate. In the present case, the Cold War's deterrent doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) does not apply. A nuclear strike against the United States won't come in the form of a missile launch from silos on the other side of the world, or a submarine lurking off our shores. Rather, as a recent RAND study speculates, a nuclear terrorist attack against the U.S. will come from a cargo container aboard a freighter arrived in a U.S. port, or, alternately, transported across the porous southern border with the same mechanisms used to smuggle tens of thousands of illegal aliens every year. . . . For these reasons -- the nature of our enemy's threat and his determination to see our destruction -- the only applicable defense is the doctrine of pre-emption. . . . Our only strategic option and our best hope of averting a nuclear attack, though it's certainly no guarantee, is pre-emptive warfare against our enemies. -- Mark M. Alexander, townhall.com, 9/1/06

AMADINEJAD IS DEAD WRONG: God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism. -- Mahmud Amadi-Nejad

SOROS IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT: The dominant position of the United States cannot be long maintained by a feel-good society that is unwilling to confront unpleasant realities. -- George Soros, The Age of Fallibility

THE GOP: It is a party of incredible ingratitude. . . . [But] at the end of the day, we have to stay with the Republicans. We have to stay with the Republicans because the Democrats are so bad. -- Bob Lonsberry, 9/1/06

COMMUNISM vs CAPITALISM: Often, when people evaluate capitalism, they evaluate a system that exists onEarth. When they evaluate communism, they are talking about a non-existent Utopia. What exists on Earth, with all of its problems and shortcomings, is always going to fail miserably when compared to a Utopia. The very attempt to achieve the utopian goals of communism requires the ruthless suppression of the individual and an attack on any institution that might compromise the loyalty ofthe individual to the state. That's why one of the first orders of business for communism, and those who support its ideas, is the attack on religion and the family. Rank nations according to whether they are closer to the capitalismend or the communism end of the economic spectrum. Then rank nations according to human rights protections. Finally, rank nations according to per capita income. Without question, citizens of those nations closer to capitalism enjoy a higher standard of living and a far greater measure of liberty than those in nations closer to communism. -- Walter Williams

WHAT'S THE USE? If a GOP Congress working with a Republican president fails to address immigration, many voters will question what exactly they are capable of accomplishing. -- John Fund

DEATH BY ATTRITION: Newsweek tries to stuff perhaps the biggest story of our time -- the sudden collapse of childbearing to below-replacement levels in virtually every free, democratic and affluent nation on this Earth -- into a happy tale of a new generation's lifestyle liberation from that old ugly 'social corset' of marriage and family... What lies beyond babies? Death. Death of the individual, and of his or her family. Death of the nation, tribe or culture that adopts a set of beliefs, practices and institutional arrangements that fail to respect and support generativity. -- Maggie Gallagher