re: Fred – “I firmly believe that if our nation’s citizenry had not been so successfully plied with bullshit from the MSM about our ‘defeat’ in the ‘illegal Iraq war for oil’ our people would be more resolute.”

Well, close. Actually, our enemies were probably more inspired by the political opposition in America abandoning their own troops in the field, while rhetorically with al-Qaeda arguments against the U.S. government. I’m sure Putin knows Lincoln’s quote better than most U.S. pols, i.e. “A house divided against itself cannot stand..”. Putin would not attack Georgia if Germany had not vetoed Georgia’s admission into NATO. And Germany would not have vetoed that admission if the Democrats had not been as successful in hamstringing Bush. Germany would have known that vetoing Georgia’s application to NATO would destroy NATO. Unfortunately, Bush was a weakened President due to the Democrat’s success at dividing a once-unified country.

What seemed politically useful for the Democrats has been, in a time of war, disastrous for American security.

(By the way, as an aside, have you noticed how frequently the colloquialism “dirty war” and “illegal war” shows up in both the lexicon of the American political left and published Russian-sympathetic media reports. Did the FSB create a new KGB “disinformation” play book? I must have missed it. I guess I was off the distribution list this time around.)