WELL PUT

Andrew McCarthy reminds us the terrorist in charge told us this would be a dangerous time.

Take a couple minutes and go read the entire thing. It will put things in a better perspective.

The sarin, the Council president's brazen murder, and the butchery of Nick Berg must anneal our resolve, not diminish it. The enemy is desperately stepping up its attacks because the enemy has glimpsed defeat. Defeat for the jihadists can be avoided only if America loses its sense of purpose and shrinks from its mission. It can be avoided only if an effectively abandoned Iraq is allowed to descend into civil war — particularly, the sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shia that Zarqawi expressly sought to provoke.

Even for those of us who remain steadfast that the U.S. incursion into Iraq was a vital step toward vanquishing the militant Islamic threat that Saddam protected and promoted, it must be conceded that there is much for people of good will to debate — both about the concept and the execution. But now is not the time. There is, after all, nothing to debate about this: In Iraq are thousands upon thousands of our best and bravest, in the thick of what the enemy aptly calls "the zero-hour"; and we have not only rhetorically linked this battle to the war our nation engaged after the 9/11 attacks, but our military is incontestably fighting the world's most lethal terrorists at this very moment.