Why al Qaeda must be defeated

The center right blogosphere is starting to buzz about Michael Yon's lastest dispatch from Iraq and rightly so. Yon tells us the story of what happened to a village in Diyala at the hands of al Qaeda "insurgents".

"On 29 June, American and Iraqi soldiers were again fighting side-by-side as soldiers from Charley Company 1-12 CAV—led by Captain Clayton Combs—and Iraqi soldiers from the 5th IA, closed in on a village on the outskirts of Baqubah. The village had the apparent misfortune of being located near a main road—about 3.5 miles from FOB Warhorse—that al Qaeda liked to bomb. Al Qaeda had taken over the village. As Iraqi and American soldiers moved in, they came under light contact; but the bombs planted in the roads (and maybe in the houses) were the real threat.
The firefight progressed. American missiles were fired. The enemy might have been trying to bait Iraqi and American soldiers into ambush, but it did not work. The village was riddled with bombs, some of them large enough to destroy a tank. One by one, experts destroyed the bombs, leaving small and large craters in the unpaved roads.
The village was abandoned. All the people were gone. But where?"

As the combined Iraqi and American troops explored the village looking for traces of the villagers they came upon a sight that would give them a foreboding sense of what was to come.

"Later in the day, some of the soldiers from the unit I share a tent with, the C-52, told me that one of their Kit Carson scouts (comprised of some of our previous enemies who have turned on al Qaeda) had pointed out an al Qaeda who had cut off the heads of children. Soldiers from C-52 say that the Kit Carson scout freaked out and tried to hide when he spotted the man he identified as an al Qaeda operative. Just how (or if) the scout really knew the man had beheaded children was unknown to the soldiers of C-52, but they took the suspected al Qaeda to the police, who knew the man. "

To say that the pictures that accompany this dispatch are disturbing and heartbreaking is an understatment of epic proportions!

On Friday, Kermit commented that he thought I was painting Islam with a bit of broad brush. Maybe so, but that will not be the case in this post. This blame for this barbarity belongs strictly to al Qaeda....the same al Qaeda that the Democrats in Congress want to abandon Iraq to!

Which brings me to this question, for ALL of our liberal readers out there. How can you justify abandoning the innocent people of Iraq to this fate? How can you sleep at night knowing that if our troops pull out (as you so desperately want to do) this fate awaits any and every village in Iraq that does not submit to al Qaeda's "tender mercies"?