DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa Republican congressman said Friday that terrorists would be “dancing in the streets” if Democratic candidate Barack Obama were to win the presidency.

Rep. Steve King based his prediction on Obama’s pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein.

“The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida … would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror,” King said in an interview with the Daily Reporter in Spencer.

King said his comments were not meant to demean Obama but to warn how an Obama presidency would look to the world.

“His middle name does matter,” King said. “It matters because they read a meaning into that.”

The Illinois senator, born in Hawaii to a white Kansas woman and a Kenyan man, is a Christian and has said he has little connection to the Islamic religion, though he acknowledges he spent part of his childhood in largely Muslim Indonesia.

In criticizing King, Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said, “These comments have no place in our politics.” He called on John McCain, the apparent Republican nominee, to “repudiate them like he has previous offensive comments from his supporters.”

Last month, McCain denounced an introduction from Cincinnati talk-show host Bill Cunningham, who referred to Obama three times as “Barack Hussein Obama.”

In the war on terror, the objective of the Islamists is to drive the US from the middle east. Unfortunately, they just can’t. They cannot meet our military directly on the field of battle, so the most they can hope for is propaganda victories through lots and lots of smaller attacks aimed at generating demoralizing media coverage (which the liberal media types themselves are all too happy to go along with). Eventually they hope that we’ll become demoralized enough to pull out troops out and leave Iraq, and the greater middle east, available for their machinations.

And which of the Presidential candidates left in the field would hand them that victory on a silver platter? Barack Obama. Certainly a Hillary victory would be beneficial to them as well, but as much as she may need to placate her far-left anti-war base she’s not stupid. She realizes that there are devastating consequences to a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, so her approach will likely be more moderate than Obama’s.

But either way, the terrorists are looking for an American leader who will give up in the middle east and Barack Obama is clearly that candidate.