At the core of the Democrats' incessant carping about the war in Iraq is their oft-stated belief that our attack on Iraq and our continued presence there are fueling the terrorist movement. But when you hear them arguing the point, you can't help coming away with the sense that it is not the terrorists' moral outrage over Iraq they are concerned with, but their own. They just don't dare go so far as to admit it.

You've heard them say our presence in Iraq is inciting otherwise peaceful Muslims to don their suicide bomber belts, and, "The Iraqi people view us as occupiers, not liberators." And how about their enthusiasm for the highly dubious (and patently absurd) poll that 80 percent of Iraqis want us out?

Surely they know that Islamofascist terrorists, who declared war on us years before they attacked us without provocation on 9/11, don't need any prompting to hate us infidels, capitalists and cultural decadents.

But if we were to turn tail and run out of Iraq, they would hate us even more, because their hatred would be compounded by a profound disrespect for our weakness and cowardice. If you truly want to incite further terrorist action against America, adopt the Democrats' Neville Chamberlainesque approach to aggressive and brutal enemies, or emulate Bill Clinton's precedent in Mogadishu.

Yet the Democrats can't possibly afford to say what they really think. It would be politically suicidal for them to express sympathy for the terrorists' ostensible moral indignation at our intervention in Iraq, so they couch their objections in pragmatic terms: Our actions are leading to the recruitment of more terrorists. But their own moral objections to the war are too overpowering for them to successfully mask.

Why else would they deliberately overlook America's accomplishments in Iraq and the historic progress of Iraqis toward constitutional self-rule? Why would they rush to embrace innuendo, propaganda, rumors and lies about American misconduct, from allegations about American torture of terrorist detainees to those of our troops terrorizing Iraqi citizens? Why would they eagerly spread the lie that we've killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis? Why do they downplay the atrocities and oppression of Saddam's reign of terror?

Indeed, if it's America's perceived misdeeds that spawn terrorism, why are Democrat leaders devoted to destroying our image abroad? Why do they, against the advice of Sen. Joe Lieberman, undermine our wartime commander in chief?

Whether or not Democrats like it, Saddam has now been deposed, and we have limited options going forward. We either withdraw before we're confident the Iraqi forces can protect the newly formed government, which would greatly increase the likelihood that Iraq would turn into another terrorist staging center and that our fallen soldiers would have died in vain. Or we remain until Iraqi forces can go it alone. Continued...