The following article has gone a long way to convince me that we have to get out of Iraq now. I was formerly of the mindset that, yeah, Bush made a horrible mistake in leading us to war in Iraq since it was and is a distraction in the War on Terror, but now that we are there, we have to see it though and internationalize the mission since we cannot let the country fall into civil war or into the hands of Al-Queda like Afghanistan did once the Soviets left.
I am starting to change my mind. And I think a lot of Americans are just like me. We supported the war in January-March 2003 because we were gullible enough to believe the President when he said that Iraq was an imminent threat to America, what with their stockpiles of WMD, nuclear weapons and ties to Osama Bin Laden. We were puzzled as to why the President declared the mission accomplished when it so obviously wasn't. We were slowly horrified at the extent of the violence against us. We were glad that Saddam was caught, and were in the process of realizing that the war was a mistake. And now we are slowly realizing that we have to get out right now.
That is why I think John Kerry has been brilliant in positioning himself. He voted for the war, yes. Well, if I was a Senator, I would probably too given what we were told. Remember, the Senate and the American people were not shown the intelligence that told us that Iraq did not have any weapons. Americans will vote for a candidate who has had the same evolution of thought on Iraq as we did. Americans who feel bretrayed because Bush lied to them will accept a candidate who was betrayed himself, and not someone who just says I told you so.
John Kerry so far has been saying that we need to turn over political and military command of Iraq to the UN and NATO respectively, all the while rotating out American forces and rotating in NATO forces so that the mission becames an international one, giving the mission the likelihood of success. Look in the coming months for John Kerry to move away from that position as the President tries to move towards it. As the violence gets worse, and as Bush fails to secure UN and NATO help.
It will be a brilliant political move. For I and the majority of the American public are slowing coming to the realization that we have to get out. Kerry will win their votes. Further, ti will please the vocal anti-war left who have th us far been either considering a vote for Nader or who plan to hold their nose for Kerry.
Check out the article and give me your thoughts:
From http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2701
Also check out this article: http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=2693. You see, even good old Pat Buchanan agrees.
Take the poll below, but first check out some excerpts of the first article:
Retired three-star general William E. Odom, who once headed the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration, is no peacenik. Nor would anyone outside the David Horowitz wing of the War Party call him "anti-American," but General Odom believes the time has come to call a spade a spade. "We have failed" in Iraq, he says, and "the issue is how high a price we're going to pay -- less by getting out sooner, or more by getting out later."
The logic of Odom's proposal is unassailable, which is why the War Party is in a panic to refute it, in spite of the unwillingness of politicians in either party to so much as mention the possibility of pulling out. In an interview with Odom on the Today Show, the clueless Katie Couric threw the "what will it do for the reputation of this country" question at him, invoking "stick-to-it-ness" as some kind of sacred American principle, to which the General replied:
"I think you've misunderstood what I said. We have already failed. Staying in longer makes us fail worse. If we were a small power, we might have to worry about our so-called credibility. I don't think that's the issue. The issue is how effective we were going to use our power. The longer we st- ... if we blindly say we should stick to it, we're misusing our power and we're making it worse. Let me put it more bluntly. Let's suppose you murdered somebody, and you suddenly look and say, `We can't afford to have murdered this person, so therefore let's save him.' I think we've passed the chances to not fail. And now we are in a situation where we have to limit the damage. And the issue is just how much we are going to pay before we decide to limit the damage, not rescue ourselves by throwing good money after bad."