When will these tone-deaf people get it through their heads that Islamic extremists have hated us since before the flood (figuratively, of course)? When will they comprehend that Osama attacked us before we attacked Iraq?

Besides, who would expect that our attack on Iraq would endear us to the enemy? It's not like we sent them a love letter. But if Iraq were not a terrorist-supporting state, why would the terrorists care? Why have they invested so much of their resources to disrupt the Iraqi freedom experiment? Why are they trying to foment a civil war there if Iraq has nothing to do with the global jihad?

More importantly, why does the left keep dredging this stuff up? The answer is they have no alternative plan for Iraq and they figure the only way they can make headway on the national security issue is to continue to paint Bush as a liar, which brings me to the main point.

Democrats have been telling us nonstop that President Bush's policies -- his alleged unilateralism in general, and his attack on Iraq specifically -- have caused an otherwise loving enemy to hate and wage war against us. If that's true -- which it isn't -- how much more true is it that the feelings of the Muslim world (and the European left) toward the United States have deteriorated as a direct result of the Democrats' constant lies about President Bush?

If they truly believe our policies have intensified the hatred of Islamic extremists toward the United States, then why don't they quit telling the world -- when they know better -- that President Bush lied about Iraqi WMD and about Saddam's relationship with Al Qaeda? Why don't they quit falsely charging that it is the covert policy of this administration to torture enemy combatant detainees at Gitmo? Why don't they quit saying that President Bush attacked Iraq for its oil?

Easy. They either don't believe negative world opinion of the United States spawns terrorism as they claim, or they don't care whether it does or not -- at least they don't care as much about that as they do regaining political power.