I tried getting through the first half of Meet the Press with Fredrick of Hollywood, but I kept nodding off. Kinda like Fred did during his answers to Timmeh. Margaret Carlson sure gets fired up for him though.

Hollywood Fred says that now we have to stay in Iraq because of perception. PERCEPTION! Wake up Fred! This isn't a LAW & Order episode. Oh, and he thinks making IED's is child's play and they've demoralized us in Iraq.

THOMPSON: ...and I said, and I said—well, let me finish. I said the United States of America could not be perceived as having been run out of Iraq with our tail between our legs because a bunch of kids on the border there making improvised explosive devices...

Download Download (mp4)

MR. RUSSERT: You made a comment the other day in South Carolina, said, “Fred Thompson said the Iraqi insurgency is made up of ‘a bunch of kids with improvised explosive devices,’ and suggested that the appearance of losing to such an enemy would harm U.S. national security.” As you know, we’ve lost 3,834 kids; 28,385 wounded or injured, 65 percent of them by these improvised devices.

MR. RUSSERT: It’s more than just a bunch of kids.

MR. THOMPSON: Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s not exactly what I said. I mean, I, I don’t minimize the fact that, that we’ve got terrorists coming in from Syria, from, from Iraq—I mean from Iran and, and other places, in Saudi Arabia, pouring in there. We, we have Sunni-Shia violence; there’s no question about that. I’ve never disputed that. Al-Qaeda, although I think they’re back on their heels now, still strong there, there’s no question.

What I said was, the—when I’m talking—I was talking about will and unity and the perception that we’re going to have around the world. The fact that friends and foes alike are looking to see what kind of a, of a, of a determination that we’re going to muster in, in dealing with this thing.

MR. RUSSERT: But you should not trivialize...

MR. THOMPSON: And I said..

MR. THOMPSON: ...and I said, and I said—well, let me finish. I said the United States of America could not be perceived as having been run out of Iraq with our tail between our legs because a bunch of kids on the border there making improvised explosive devices. The—as they’re going to recruit future al-Qaeda young men, they’re not going to get into the nuances of the various factions that are our enemy down there. They’re going to go say, “Look, you can do, you can do exactly what your brothers did. You can be a part of us. We brought them down. We brought the United States of America to its knees.” And, in large part, it is because of young people making—they call them improvised for a reason. I mean, they’re, they’re pretty low-tech kind of operations by people probably with not much education, and they can be taught to do this, and they’re causing great damage to us. And you go to places, Brook Army Medical Center and so forth, they don’t handle no one—nothing but burns and amputees, and you see what’s, what’s, what’s been done there. They’ve, they’ve, they’ve demoralized us in many respects. They’ve hurt us badly. There’s, there’s no question about that. It should not be minimized.

But the point being, these young people that I’ve talked to know what they’re doing, and they know that they’re doing something good for their country, and we need to understand that, too. And we cannot let the perception be, and the new potential recruits for al-Qaeda be convinced of the notion that these young people like this can bring us down.