I heard Dinesh D'Souza on MPR and I was surprised to hear him called a "conservative" commentator.  Except for his inflamatory title of his book, and the fact that he blames "liberals" for all our troubles with Millitant Islam, he sounds "liberal".

1) He says that Millitant Muslims make up a small percentage of the Muslim world.

2) He doesn't insist on calling Islam "Islamofascism".

3) He characterizes the situation for most traditional Muslims in the world today as a defacto choice between Secular tyranny and Religious tyranny without implying that either are inherant failings of Arabs or Islam.

4) He talks about how the U.S. is a liberal country, and has been liberal from it's founding.  He also claims that conservatives guard that foundation.  And he's right.  REAL conservatives do.  There used to be a lot of progressive conservatives in this country.  There's still a few of them left.  I may not agree with them all the time, but at least when we argue, we argue from the correct foundation.

The one thing I had a problem with is his reasoning for the tenacity of the insurgents.   He blames their perception that if Democrats are in charge, we will leave Iraq without an orderly exit stratagy that provides for a stable Iraq. 

I agree that that is a major factor, but I don't think the Democrats are responsible for that perception.  I think the Republicans are.  They are the ones who have been useing the words "cut and run"  The democrats are talking about strategy change, about stepping up the pace of achieving the goals, about ways to bring the Iraqi government up to speed, and asking when we can expect these things.

OK, Dennis Kuchinich and a handful of others with little or no real leverage have said stupid stuff, but they just get air-time because the MSM love to play clips of them saying stuff and watch Rush Limbaugh's face get all red and puffy.  Then he says stuff that makes some dipshit "liberal" pundit's face get all red and puffy.  The John Stewart makes fun of whoever acted like the biggest dick.  Then I laugh...but I digress.

There's no way we're getting out until the job is done.  So let's get on that.

You want another 20,000 troops, let's hear about how the way your going to use them is going to be more effective than the way you use the one's you've got there now.  Let's hear how the "surge" is going to get us out of there faster.  And I want to hear real retired generals say they think it'll work.

Hey, I don't even need to hear the words "slam dunk".  I'd settle for it passing the sniff test, which, by the way "we'll be greeted as liberators" never did.  And neither did the WMD thing either.

Which is one other problem I have with Mr. D'Souza:  He says that President Bush made the best decision he could based on the intel. he had about the WMD.  Not true.  There was tons of information that Iraq had no real WMD capability.  People were all over the place talking about it.  You might remember the names Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, for instance?  There were many people saying that it just wasn't likely at all.  The Pres. just didn't listen to them.