Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Get the Congressman a Clue   [George Conway]

An Associated Press story dated yesterday, entitled "Hastert: U.S. can defend borders like it has Iraq's," quotes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert as saying:

I always say if we can protect Iraq's borders against Syria and, you know, Jordan, and everyplace else, Iran, we can protect our own borders.

Hello? Earth to Denny: Have you been following the Iraq situation for, say, the last three years? Well, here is what an article just a few weeks ago on defenselink.mil, the official Defense Department website, has to say about the situation on what the article describes as Iraq's "porous" borders:

al Qaeda in Iraq . . . has imported foreign fighters to launch suicide attacks in Baghdad. These horrific attacks have killed hundreds of innocent Iraqi men, women and children as well as members of the Iraqi security forces and coalition servicemembers. This is a particular problem along Iraq's border with Syria.

In addition, extremists bring weapons - especially components for improvised explosive devices - into the country. The most deadly of these - the explosive fragmentation projectile, or shaped charge - comes in mainly over the border from Iran, officials said.

We should hope that the Army's efforts to create an effective border patrol in Iraq will succeed. But we certainly ought to try to do better at home.

08/16 06:19 PM