Conservatives need to sit down before reading the latest from Newsweek on Iraq – it is a stunning story of success from one of the most ardent of the SurrenderMedia. Liberals may want to lay down to make sure they really don’t hurt themselves!

A year ago Shura Chamal-Eit (Elizabeth Street) in downtown Fallujah was a lethal place for American troops attempting to tame the city, a center of lawlessness and defiance by insurgents. Terrorists from Al Qaeda in Iraq and other groups attacked Coalition troops on the street and around the city, killing some and injuring many. But as U.S. Marines here pass yet another Christmas fighting a war few expected to last this long, Fallujah is on the verge of becoming a success story and symbol of a new, cooperative paradigm for winning Iraq.
Fed up with the wanton assassinations and summary executions by Al Qaeda in Iraq and alarmed that the group was strangling Fallujah’s economy, city leaders and residents joined forces with the Marines to expel the group. Many Fallujah residents once offered help to insurgents or at best looked the other way when they fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortar and artillery at Marines and killed or maimed them with the dreaded improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that became commonplace. The same residents now identify insurgents to the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police force, who kill, capture or drive them from the city. Many of the terrorists have fled into the desert, often into Tharthar, an area also in Anbar province, north of Fallujah.

2008 is the year to debate Iraq’s future – because it is still critical to our national security. As the year progresses it will become clear Bush was correct, Iraq was worth fighting because it exposed the ugly brutality of al-Qaeda and turned it from being the hope for Islam’s future to Islam’s enemy which must be destroyed. Comparing al-Qaeda to the Nazis is not a stretch, the only difference is Bin Hitler (which is so much more accurate than the childish liberal Bushitler) never got a chance to establish is government run torture facilities. Dachau never was created because Bin Hitler never rose to power in Iraq (where it would have been reincarnated and filled with infidels to be slaughtered).
Bush was right and what we need is a President and Congress which will take actions to protect our hard won successes and grow them into even larger successes. Which pretty much excludes the doubters, the Surrendercrats, the handwringers, the Chicken Littles and all those who predicted failure in such faulty flourish. Instead of Bin Hitler plotting the destruction of the West from his caliphate capitol of Ramadi in Anbar al-Qaeda is on the run and a public enemy number one in Iraq. The Muslim street decided which way to go and it was not the way the far left expected (and seemingly at times desired). Who has a plan to build on this success? That is the number 1 issue for 2008.