It's time for Vice President Dick Cheney to resign from office and for Democratic leaders to still their tongues on the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. This Vice President is a much larger disgrace to all that America symbolizes than Spiro T ever was.

Cheny's consistent berating of any American daring to speak out against this administration is a slap in the face to every American soldier who sacrificed their life for the American ideal of freedom. Let us return to the office of the vice presidency an exhibition of gratitude for every veteran who survived the fight with Hitler, and his Axis of Evil, rather than keep in office a man who stands in agreement with those very ideals we and our English brethren sacrificed so much to turn back and defeat.

We in America can and will speak out in disagreement with one another and respect one another's opinions because, right or wrong, it is still second to the freedom we enjoy and each of us should respect. If Dick Cheney prefers a nation run like Stalin's Soviet Union, I'm sure there is a job somewhere in Venezuela's Chavez-run government. He ought to apply.

Democrats, on the other hand, must keep from making another in a series of mistakes when dealing with Muslim fundamentalism. We must remember that the first Muslim fundamentalist attack on this great nation came under the Administration of President James Carter. After all, it was Muslim fundamentalism that stormed the American Embassy in Tehran and held American Hostages through that Administration costing an incumbent an second term.

Ronald Reagan, the great orator, was also a presidential victim to a Muslim fundamentalist attack. The bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut was yet another assault on this nation by the very insurgents who would greatly capitalize on an immediate American withdrawal of forces from Iraq. Let us remember the wheelchair-ridden Mr. Klinghoffer, who was wheeled over the edge of the Achille Lauro, a cruise ship sailing the seas with the promise of good food, good entertainment, and that general escape from the everyday madness of our lives we call vacations.

We are at war with the same fundamentalism that assassinated the largely equally fundamentalist, Rabbai Meir Kahane. Have we forgotten the 16 year-old traveling across the Brooklyn Bridge in a school van? He died at the hands of the Muslim extremism that opened fire from a car. The World Trade Towers, were attacked long before the two hijacked jets brought them down, killing 1000's. The attacks against this nation began long before September 11th and until September 11th, were met with little, if any, response.

I'd like nothing more than to see the world adapt the religious ideology of peace on Earth and Good will to all and I won't argue with anyone that this war with Iraq was based on fiction. Perhaps the only honest statement this administration made was when our President reminded America that, "After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad." But I believe that there are good people in Iraq, grasping this moment in history to rebuild a nation based on democratic ideals and perhaps act as an anchor against the growing military might of the Fundamentalist regime next door.

It would be an injustice to those who have died in this conflict to pack it in and come home before allowing Iraq to stand up and emerge, no more a fundamentalist nation than our friends in Egypt, Kuwait or the horde of Jordanians that took to the streets in protest of acts of terror in the name of religion. Acts of war that have that have gained momentum after two decades of unanswered assaults on this great nation. Leaving now can only embolden our enemies, not encourage them to lay down their goals.