Joe Lieberman today: "Things are looking up"
Just at the moment things are at last beginning to look up in Iraq, a narrow majority in Congress has decided that it's time to force our military to retreat. Rather than supporting Gen. Petraeus, they are threatening to strip him of the troops he says he needs and sabotage his strategy. ...
The deadline for retreat that Congress wants to impose is both arbitrary and inflexible. American troops would be forced to begin withdrawing regardless of conditions in Iraq, regardless of the recommendations of our military commanders, and regardless of what impact a hasty retreat would have on America's security and credibility ...
Decisions in war should be made by our military commanders based on facts on the battlefield, not by politicians in Washington watching the polls. ...
A deadline for withdrawal is a guarantee of defeat. ...
Rather than imposing a deadline that ensures our failure, Congress should ... give Gen. Petraeus and his troops a chance to succeed.
Rambling Joe said the same thing in a November 29, 2005 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, when he praised Bush's Iraq strategy and predicted a withdrawal of US Troops by the end of 2006 or 2007:
I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there... Progress is visible and practical... Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq ? Yes we do... The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week. We are now embedding a core of coalition forces in every Iraqi fighting unit, which makes each unit more effective and acts as a multiplier of our forces. Progress in "clearing" and "holding" is being made... American military forces could begin a draw down in numbers proportional to the increasing self-sufficiency of the Iraqi forces in 2006. If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come."
Also, at a July 2006 debate with challenger Ned Lamont, Rambling Joe estimated that troops would be coming home by the end of 2006 and that half would be out of Iraq by the end of 2007, saying:
"So I am confident that the situation is improving enough on the ground that by the end of this year, we will begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops, and by the end of the next year more than half of the troops who are there now will be home."