Vice President Dick Cheney must have been playing with his shotgun that doesn't shoot straight again. He is charging that the Democrats' attempt to stop President Bush's troop surge in Iraq will "validate the al-Qaida strategy."

Talk about an Alice-In-Wonderland view of the Iraq war. The Veep has it upside down. What's validating al-Qaida is the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld strategy of mismanaging the war. They jettisoned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after the voter backlash in November, but they kept a tired old war policy that's not working.

So instead of figuring out how to develop a winning strategy, the Bush/Cheney machine does the same old thing, and we get the same old results. Maybe the Democrats don't have a better idea about the war, but you can't blame them for the Iraq debacle. That came from the Bush/Cheney brain trust.

Now Cheney wants to divert attention from the mess by questioning the Democrats' patriotism. It's an old strategy by the Republicans. The public will see through it.

Bush and Cheney are right about one thing. We must fight terrorists on their soil, not ours. But the Taliban is reasserting itself in Afghanistan and now Iraq is a haven for terrorists. How are Bush and Cheney going to turn this around?

Posted by Jim Boren at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We had a great time celebrating the Fourth of July yesterday. The food was all wonderful, the water in the pool was just right. We had a great day with family and friends. And a fireworks display in the street capped the evening.

But the best part of the day, which reminded our family why we celebrate our nation's independence, was a phone call that was missed.

After dinner, before the fireworks, my husband, Denny, checked his cell phone and saw that he had a new voice mail. He listened to the message. "Rob's on his way home," he said when he finished.

Rob Ford, our friend who lives in Nebraska, is an Army National Guard soldier who has been serving in Afghanistan training the Afghan National Army for the past year. (That's him in the photo; he's on the left; Denny is on the right) We've worried every time we've heard news of new casualties in Afghanistan. And we've followed reports of his year over there by reading his blog. It's given us a glimpse into the life of some of our soldiers and life in another country.

On Sept. 11, the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Rob wrote about a special ceremony the soldiers took part in: "Almost everybody at the Alamo [what they called their base] bought a flag to fly on September 11th. It is special to fly a U.S. flag in Afghanistan on the anniversary of the event that brought us over here. To me, it is a way to tell Al-Qaida that we haven't forgotten why we are here and we don't plan to leave till the job is done." Rob sent us the flag that he flew.

At the end of September, his camp was hit by a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. None of the American soldiers were injured, but several of the Afghan soldiers that Rob worked side by side with were killed or injured. It was a vivid reminder of the danger faced by our soldiers there.

As the fireworks exploded in a frenzy of color and light, we listened to Lee Ann Rimes singing the National Anthem, Alan Jackson singing "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," Lee Greenwood singing "God Bless the U.S.A." It was all made so much better knowing that Rob was on his way back to his family, back to safety. In our family, we support our troops who are doing their jobs - but that doesn't make us any less happy when they come home to us.

Posted by Lisa Maria Boyles at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)