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Source: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/in_the_media/in_the_media_show.htm?doc_id=228970
Iraq's Future and the War on Terrorism
(Foundation for the Defense of Democracies)Senator Joe Lieberman - The war we are waging against Islamic terrorists in Iraq and around the world is fundamentally a war of ideas and a war of values, a war of conflicting visions of humans and history. Our core principles of freedom and opportunity are at stake. What we are fighting against is an Islamic terrorist totalitarian movement which is as dire a threat to individual liberty as the fascist and communist totalitarian threats we faced and defeated were in the last century. What we are fighting against is the prospect of a new evil empire, a radical Islamic caliphate which would suppress the freedom of its people and threaten the security of every other nation's citizens. The Islamist jihadist terrorists who wage holy war against us in Iraq and elsewhere represent a system of values exactly the opposite of America's. This radicalized, violent vision of Islam, as yet embraced by only a minority of Muslims, leaves no room for individual freedom. To call the war in Iraq separate and distinct from the larger war on terrorism is inaccurate. Iraq today is a crucial battle in the global war on terrorism. Bin Laden's henchmen are fighting side-by-side with Saddam's loyalists on the streets of Baghdad and across Iraq, striving to stop the onward march of Iraqi self-government, of democracy.