In today's Chicago Tribune there is an article about the difficult logistical challenge that leaving Iraq will be. I think this is an important article. While I understand that the Tribune is doing this article, to support the administration's position that leaving Iraq will be fraught with danger, I believe there is more than a grain of truth when they say:
When it comes, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and the dismantling of the vast American presence here promises to be as risky and unpredictable as the past four years of war.
The problem is that administration has shown no ability to carry off major operations. They override commanders and get rid of generals they do not like. So why do we trust them to pull off a major operation like this. While we can force them to withdraw by declining to fund the war. I fear that there doomsday predictions will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And they are not planning any better for withdrawal, than they have for any other part of the war:
Yet the Bush administration, long intent on avoiding what it once called a "cut and run" retreat from Iraq, has done little to lay the groundwork for withdrawal, officials here said.
While it is clear that having troops in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster and that there will be more loss of civilian and military lives over the next 18 months. Having a major military operation like withdrawing 160,000 troops while the we have an atmosphere of deception and mistrust seems like a very bad idea. I firmly believe that there will be less loss of life during withdrawal if we had a different administration and that if things did start to go wrong, we could have an open and honest debate about how to make things better.
Of course, this means that if we want to leave now we need to impeach before we withdraw our troops. And that is why I fundamentally disagree with Senator Feingold's diary of a few days ago.