"Whats the difference between al Qaeda and an insurgent? The Republican machinery thinks that the public doesn't know the difference and that it doesn't care."

Ha! No kidding. My guess is that the Republican machinery's estimate of the general awareness level out there in middle America isn't too far off in that respect.

You can depend on this: Every major candidate in the USA, Republican or otherwise, anyone who has any REAL chance of being elected, will continue to talk tough about fighting the War on Terror and about "supporting our military", and will continue to pretend the USA is saving the world from radical Islam. They wouldn't dare NOT say so, they wouldn't dare admit that the USA itself has made the bed it's presently sleeping in, because if they didn't sound the usual pro-military rhetoric, their political opponents would have them dead in their sights...and their major sources of corporate funding would cut the purse strings.

It's Clint Eastwood and John Wayne psychology in Middle America, and it always has been. There are supposedly always some terribly Un-American bad guys out there somewhere in the world in distant impoverished countries threatening our entire western civilization....trying to destroy our freedoms. Oh yeah. And they talk funny, and they have swarthy skin and mustaches, and they have dark and terrible plans to enslave us all. They must be stopped.

It's absolute BS from the word go. It's the wolf yelling to the pack, "Those sheep and goats mean to kill us all!"   But they will all keep saying it till hell freezes over. They wouldn't dare not to.

He who does not suck up constantly to the military in the USA does not get elected.