For those that are a little dense, the President spells it out...one more time

For those like Steve Berg that love to whine "Why are we in Iraq? " the President spells it out, yet once again, in his address to military families yesterday; distilled here for Mr. Berg and his ilk:

...Our nation is engaged in a global war on terror that affects the safety and security of every American...

..On September the 11th, 2001, we saw the future that the terrorists intend for our country and the lengths they're willing to go to achieve their aims. We faced a clear choice. We could hunker down, retreating behind a false sense of security, or we could bring the war to the terrorists, striking them before they could kill more of our people.

I made a decision -- America will not wait to be attacked again. Our doctrine is clear: We will confront emerging threats before they full materialize. And if you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist.

We will stay on the offense. We'll complete our work in Afghanistan and Iraq. An immediate withdrawal of our troops in Iraq, or the broader Middle East, as some have called for, would only embolden the terrorists and create a staging ground to launch more attacks against America and free nations. So long as I'm the President, we will stay, we will fight, and we will win the war on terror.

...The second part of our strategy is this -- and it's based upon this fact: In an open society like ours -- and we will keep it open and we will keep it free -- it is impossible to protect against every threat. That's a fact we have to deal with. In a free society it is impossible to protect against every possible threat. And so the only way to defend our citizens where we live is to go after the terrorists where they live.

...And the third part of our strategy is this: We're spreading the hope of freedom across the broader Middle East. In the long run, the only way to defeat the terrorists is by offering an alternative to their ideology of hatred and fear.

And here's a preemptive rebuttal to the specious argument that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11:

Osama bin Laden hated the United States because of the presence of our military in Saudi Arabia — a presence necessitated by the brutal, expansionist nature of the dictator next door. Military bases in Saudi Arabia, economic sanctions against Iraq and enforcement of the no-fly zones were all part of an Iraq policy that failed us on September 11. After 9/11, we had two choices to remedy that failed policy: disengage from Iraq and leave Saddam free to develop weapons, massacre the Kurds and the Shiites, and attack his neighbors; or undertake efforts to change the regime, a goal of U.S. policy since the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act.