"Senator, let me quote from Star Wars"

What is it about Republicans and fiction? I'm talking about novels. Their speeches about how Iraq is going "remarkably well," how they are fiscal conservatives and the party of "family values" is all fiction but they seem to like to drag best sellers in when they argue policy. The latest "open mouth, insert foot" moment was when Republican Senator Rick Santorum compared Iraq to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. As reported recently, Sen. Santorum "said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has been drawn to Iraq instead. As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.,” Santorum continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States.” Reminds me of former Vice President Dan Quayle who argued on the Senate floor for funding of antisatellite weapons because they had been so effective in the Tom Clancy novel "Red Storm Rising." I wish I were joking about any of this but unfortunately I'm not. Quayle argued for funding the ASAT antisatellite weapon on the grounds that it was what won the war in Clancy's book. That would be Clancy's book of fiction. I believe the exact quote was, "We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in 'Red Storm Rising'." "They're not just novels," Quayle explained. "They're read as the real thing."

Note to Ricky -- um, in Lord of the Ring the Eye of Sauron was indeed drawn away from Mordor as you say the "eye" is drawn towards Iraq. But in Tolkien's tale the distraction of the Sauron's eye was precisely how a couple of hobbits were able to sneak attack up Mount Doom and destroy the One Ring. Hello? Get it? It's not the jihadists who are distracted in Iraq. They are gaining in size, strength and experience. It's the U.S. being distracted in Iraq and we are the ones who aren't watching the ports or the borders or the chemical plants or the airports or the nuclear reactors. And another small note, yes we haven't been attacked on U.S. soil for five years but we weren't attacked on U.S. soil for eight years after the 1993 World Trade Center car bombing and we all know how that turned out on September 11th. So stop making 5th grade analogies about complex foreign policy issues. Stop reading fiction and try a bit of fact. The only bright spot in this story is that the latest poll shows Rick-baby losing his Senate seat 52% to 44%. Hopefully that poll is fact and not fiction.