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It is Over- Bush Just Can't Admit It !!!!!!

A

Anonymous

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I watched these hearings the other night and they were quite a different picture from what King George has been painting...And all the Senators (both R's & D's) on the committee sounded pretty much in agreement that something had to be done- starting sooner rather than later (because the testimony showed how daily our military defense capability decreases- at a time when we need more troops in Afghanistan and would be in dire straits if something broke out somewhere else)- and that they need to try and get a bipartisan move going again to put pressure on GW to admit it is over- that a Democracy won't exist in Iraq- and make it clear to the Iraqi government they need to do something on their own....


U.S. must leave Iraq, retired generals say

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Apr 4, 2008 12:45:38 EDT

Setting a withdrawal timetable from Iraq might be a shaky strategic move, but it would provide a morale boost for service members and their families, a former Army War College commandant said Wednesday.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales Jr., testifying before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee about U.S. military strategy in Iraq, said he has no doubt that a major withdrawal of combat forces is coming because the U.S. has “run out of military options” and cannot indefinitely sustain troop levels.

“Regardless of who wins the election and regardless of conditions on the ground, by summer the troops will begin to come home,” said Scales, who headed the war college in 1997. “The only point of contention is how precipitous will be the withdrawal and whether the schedule of withdrawal should be a matter of administration policy.”

White House and Pentagon officials have resisted efforts by some lawmakers to set a fixed timetable for withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq, arguing that insurgents and other groups would try to use the dates to their advantage.

Scales, who was one of the creators of the Army After Next program in 1995 that helped plan for transforming the force, agreed that following a fixed withdrawal schedule “is not a good idea in an insurgency because the indigenous population tends to side with the perceived winners.”

“However, some publicly expressed window of withdrawal is necessary, for no other reason than to give soldier’s families some hope that their loved ones will not be stuck on a perpetual rollercoaster of deployments,” he said.

Scales testified along with two other retired Army generals, Gen. Barry McCaffrey and Lt. Gen. William Odom, who also agreed a withdrawal of U.S. combat troops early in the next president’s administration is inevitable.

“We face a deteriorating political situation with an over-extended Army,” said Odom, who served as director of the National Security Agency in the Reagan administration.

“The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order,” Odom said. “Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping U.S. strategy in the region.”

McCaffrey, a former chief of U.S. Southern Command and commander of the 24th Infantry Division in the 1991 Gulf War, predicted a withdrawal of U.S. forces within three years or less because there is “no U.S. political will to continue” and because allies “have abandoned us.”

“It is over,” McCaffrey said.

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/04/military_iraqwithdrawal_040208w/
 

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