Letters to the Editor: It feels like war's tide is turning

It feels like war's tide is turning WIS. ST. JRNL 6/17/06 Zarqawi, the murderer of countless innocents in the Middle East, is dead, thanks to an F-16 delivering two U.S. 500-pound bombs. The mini computer drive found on his body led coalition troops to terrorists' nests, which resulted in over 100 terrorist deaths and capture of over 700 in raids which took place not long after Zarqawi died. Iraq's National Security Advisor release of an al-Qaida memo which characterized their situation as "bleak" and conceded that time is now of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance, and "offered a pointed admission, that al-Qaida in Iraq is in a crisis." It went on to lament that America was having success in training Iraq's new security forces. President Bush makes a surprise visit to Iraq to meet with the Iraqi government to assure them we will keep our word and not abandon them, but the Iraqi government must step up security to guard the safety of their own country as soon as possible. As he said even before the war, "when the Iraqi security forces can stand up, our troops will stand down." Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., Sens. Feingold, Kennedy and Kerry discover that the majority of the Senate does not share their "cut and run" mentality, nor does the House. Their vote said stay the course. Millions in Iraq and Afghanistan are free and working hard at standing up a representative democracy. The 2,500 brave men and women of the U.S. armed forces who made the ultimate sacrifice for our safety and freedoms and to free over 50 million people have not died in vain. -- Bill Richardson, Madison