Speaker Pelosi pledged to bring-up a clean funding bill if their 'pork and retreat' strategy failed. Together with the President's veto pledge, the GOP letter should make it obvious that the Democrat strategy has, indeed, failed. The path Democrats have chosen is clearly a dead end - an exercise in partisan futility that puts both American troops and their mission in jeopardy.

Members of Congress have a duty to stand and fight against those who seek our destruction. Our troops are committed to fighting and winning this global war. We owe them our unfailing support, not a half-cooked scheme to mandate failure. Weakness or withdrawal in Iraq will embolden a fanatical enemy and could lead directly to chaos or genocide.

We fight an enemy-Radical Islam-with which there will be no Treaty of Paris or battleship surrender ceremonies. But that is not to say there will not be peace. There will be peace and an end to bloodshed, but only if we remain committed to winning and don't lose our will to fight.

Do Democrats have the will? They continue to deny the fact that America is battling terrorism on a global scale, desperately trying to force a retreat from Iraq and going so far as to propose banning Congressmen from using the phrase "Global War on Terror." How do Democrats expect America to fight and win a war they deny is even taking place?

It is unacceptable that Democratic leaders would put America's national security on such thin ice by playing politics with troop funding. But it's not too late for them to do the right thing. They should scrap their pork-laden retreat bill and start over. Let's drop the pork, untie the hands of the generals, and support the troops.