14 September 2007
For 20 minutes last evening I listened to Bush stretch the truth on the success of the surge and tell some outright lies about events in Iraq. To hear him say that the Iraqis want us to remain in Iraq when in reality only a small portion of politicos want us there and the majority of the Iraqi people want us to go home, made me gasp in disbelief. Nothing has changed toward a new direction and the troops going home (and not soon enough for me) are the troops due to leave as the surge ends. I shudder to think of a long term presence in Iraq.
Here I quote Bush, “In all we do, I will ensure that our commanders on the ground have the troops and flexibility they need to defeat the enemy.” Defeating the enemy isn’t going to happen. Al-Qaeda is popping up all over the world and the majority of fighting in Iraq is done by Sunni/Shia factions in their civil war. We need to start redeploying our troops now so that only a skeleton training mission is left in Iraq by the next presidential election. If not, and the next president is a Democrat, then the Democrats will be blamed for any expanded civil war after we leave. The national debt will be carried on to my great, great grandchildren and it grows by 12 billion a week for the war alone.
Another Bush quote, “The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home.”Our success on the ground really limits our troops return home. Success needs to come on a political level and that isn’t happening with the Iraqi government. To think that Bush and Patraeus plan to keep 130,000 troops in Iraq for an indefinite amount of time makes me sick. The 11 or 12 Republicans in Congress who appear to be critical of the President’s war plan (those 11 are: Alexander (Tenn.), Coleman (Minn.), Domenici (N.M.), Lugar (Ind.), McConnell (Ky.), Murkowski (Alaska), Sessions (Ala.), Specter (Penn.), Sununu (N.H.), Warner (Va.) and Voinovich (Ohio). Elizabeth Dole is another possibllity) need to break from Bush and vote with Democrats on a real withdrawal. If they don’t move forward to help end the conflict, the next president, whomever it is will inherit this mess and will be blamed for whatever happens if we do leave.
Entries (RSS)