George Bush and his power hungry cronies Cheney and Rumsfeld (can you say Three Stooges - "Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard") got us into a war on false pretenses. It turns out they were at best wrong and at worst lying about the existence of WMD, which at the time was THE reason for going to Iraq. Anybody with a single cell left in the memory portion of their brain knows that the war on terror and ousting an evil dictator are mere excuses developed after the fact, probably by Karl ("The Genius") Rove. The same genius who brought you "how to win an election with a negative margin" and other political hits.
All of that is nice history. It is good for the democrats to win the next election. It makes for great sound bites on things like trust, and misleading the American people, and look where the republicans have got us. It has, however, absolutely no relevance to the state of the war today or whether or not we should leave. As much as people say it does, they are wrong. The problem is not only are we there, but for better or worse WE got the Iraqi people into this mess and we are responsible.
What do you think will happen if we pull out and in Vietnam like fashion reduce our troop strength to nothing? Do you believe that Iraq will be better for it? Do you believe that the Sunni insurgents or the Shia militia will similarly reduce their activities? Do you think that Iraqi's will not continue to die? My prediction - Iran will step in. They will shut down the media, they will wipe out the Sunni population and they will take over Iraq. The existing government will probably invite them. They will stabilize the Country and become the most powerful nation in the Middle East. Is that what we want? Another scenario would be a continuation of the status quo without the US and the emergence on one side or another of a Saddam-like dictator. Is that what we want?
Like it or not, we have be put in the unenviable position, thanks to the Three Stooges, of being responsible for the good people in Iraq. We can not desert them. If we do, we will be compounding the mistake made by Bush and we will be responsible for even more death and destruction. In my view we should give David Petraeus what he wants and let him do his job. Then we will be able to get out, but not for a while and not without further loss of life. Loss of life that was unnecessary before but is now made necessary by the venality of this administration.
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