Reid gives hope to the enemy

Take a look at this story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

"We're not losing this war."

That's how a Las Vegas Army Reserve sergeant and Iraq war veteran who is heading out again for Operation Iraqi Freedom reacted Friday to Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's assessment that the war in Iraq is "lost."

"I don't believe the war is lost," Sgt. George Turkovich, 24, said as he stood with other soldiers near a shipping container that had been packed for their deployment to Kuwait.

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"Unfortunately, politics has taken a huge role in this war affecting our rules of engagement," said Turkovich, a 2001 Palo Verde High School graduate. "This is a guerrilla war that we're fighting, and they're going to tie our hands.

"So it does make it a lot harder for us to fight the enemy, but we're not losing this war," he said.

For the most part, the 50-plus soldiers from a detachment of the Army Reserve's 314th Combat Service Support Battalion expressed similar views about Reid's war-is-lost comments this week. They respectfully disagreed with the Democrat.

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The 314th's stateside commander, Lt. Col. Steven Cox, said the political controversy swirling around the war "does weigh upon us because the representatives are supposed to represent American sentiments."

"I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that the American people would leave their military dangling in the wind the way the good senator is doing," Cox said.

"Defeatism ... from our elected officials does not serve us well in the field," he said. "They embolden the enemy, and they actually leave them with the feeling that they can defeat us and win this.

"All they have to do is wait us out because the American resolve is waning," he said.

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You win wars by making the enemy feel his cause if hopeless. Harry Reid has been doing the opposite by giving hope to the enemy and trying to take it a way from our side. Reid may be hopeless, but the men fighting this war know that they can win if given the chance.