Senate Republicans Pushing for a Plan on Ending the War in Iraq

[RickSp]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/po...rtner=homepage

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - In a sign of increasing unease among Congressional Republicans over the war in Iraq, the Senate is to consider on Tuesday a Republican proposal that calls for Iraqi forces to take the lead next year in securing the nation and for the Bush administration to lay out its strategy for ending the war. The plan stops short of a competing Democratic proposal that moves toward establishing dates for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But it is built upon the Democratic approach and makes it clear that senators of both parties are increasingly eager for Iraqis to take control of their country in coming months and open the door to removing American troops.

Even after the Republicans claimed that anyone asking for an exit strategy didn't "support the troops," they are finally pushing for an exit strategy themselves. Not surprising I suppose. 6 in 10 Americans think the war in Iraq is not worth it and 67% rate the administration's ethics as poor. Only 40% think Bush can be considered "truthful." I guess even the Senate Republicans can read the polls.

[Rainbow]

Quote by: RickSp Senate Republicans Pushing for a Plan on Ending the War in Iraq Even after the Republicans claimed that anyone asking for an exit strategy didn't "support the troops," they are finally pushing for an exit strategy themselves. Not surprising I suppose. 6 in 10 Americans think the war in Iraq is not worth it and 67% rate the administration's ethics as poor. Only 40% think Bush can be considered "truthful." I guess even the Senate Republicans can read the polls.

Off Topic
What is the matter of importance, "which" political party and "what" it may porpose ?
Do you really think that those guys are that stupid they can not come up with some solutions on their own, but it needs to be sorted within political party's channels ?
Bear it in your mind, that if a political party offers the People all they can come up with, the other party would offer "nothing" while taking over reigns, as the result of voting system.
That would lead to mono-party political system, that contradicts with philosophical and ideological bases for democracy. Such systems are being called "autocracy" , and refer to "muzzling policy" as the effective result, mostly.

Is not Amercia all about One ?

On Topic
Creating a deadline for U.S. troops' withdrawal from Iraq (in this case) is a complete misleading proposal, and whoever does it knows that very well. One can not predict the tomorrow's outcomes.
More over, there is no assurance that a military personnel can be well trained within a year. How to set a date for a withdrawal ? That is a complete nonsense.

Both - Democrats and Republicans, have political points in mind to be gained, in order to be elected by the People. For the expense of others they offer the People nothing real.
Both sux, greatly.

I want to hear those disappointed 67% , when they start complaining on living standards in few years to come, in case there is no pro-democratic government in Iraq in power. They would press governing bodies for solution(s).

bishop already posted an excellent answer to those 67% disappointed (not having them in mind - at that time, probably) :
- U.S. has transformmed itself into "service-related" state
What is going to be produced, then ? By whom ?
How to sell that product to others, in order to compete ?
That is the reason post-communist countries in Europe have become economic (at least) target for marketting. That is what Iraq is all about, as well, with the rest of Middle-East and Asia in mind.
Some of the solutions :
- apply the latest technology in order to compete on markets ; it is risky in some fields, since some countries may use that technology for completely different purposes in mind
- lower a production cost ; we need a low-cost energy source, which is the oil, today
That is the reason many U.S. business companies set their production lines in countries that a labor is very cheap, like Taiwan, Indonesia, Malasya, ect.

The future does not mean tomorrow, literally and always.

[RickSp]

I will admit to being disappointed. I am waiting for Zealot to call the Senate Republicans cowards and liars. Seemed like the least we could expect.

[Apeman81]

They are, in this, cowards. This is why we, the people should take better care in selecting our political leaders. Too many on all sides of the aisle spend more effort assuring their continued power than using that power for good.

[RickSp]

Quote by: Apeman81 They are, in this, cowards. This is why we, the people should take better care in selecting our political leaders. Too many on all sides of the aisle spend more effort assuring their continued power than using that power for good.

Cowards you say? I prefer the cowards to the scoundrels who lied us into a needless war.

[CoffeeSaint]

I told Zealot I was a coward; he never responded. So I'll ask it here: what's so bad with being a coward? Cowards don't start wars, cowards don't kill thousands of people. I'm with Rick: I'd rather be a coward than a liar, and I'd rather follow a coward than a liar.

[Jack]

next year in securing the nation and for the Bush administration to lay out its strategy for ending the war.

At least they're giving him enough time to come up with one.

An exit strategy is different than an exit timetable. It may well be unrealistic for anyone to predict the time and date we can safely withdraw from Iraq. It is not unrealistic to have a plan for withdrawal that will be enacted when the time does come.

[zynner]

Quote by: RickSp 6 in 10 Americans think the war in Iraq is not worth it and 67% rate the administration's ethics as poor. Only 40% think Bush can be considered "truthful." I guess even the Senate Republicans can read the polls.

From Saturday Night Live:

"66% of Americans now disapprove of the job George Bush is doing.

"The other 34% think Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church."

;-)

~ zynner

[Osborn F Enready]

What is a coward?

To me, a coward is someone who has not the spine to stand up for what they believe in, or a person who gives in, only because the battle is hard.(not wrong)

The republicans are WAKING UP, they aren't cowards. They see they are bringing down the whole bi-partisan scham, and people are getting pissed off with every AMERICAN life that is expended in Iraq. So they are going to make some noise, and begrudgingly drag their feet , while scuffing at the carpet in trying to find a way to heal the rupture, and get on with seizing power at home, after they get the public pacifier in again.

Democrats are all pissed, because they had to expose so many of their own weak spots, now they may have toppled the power seat, and some cronies, but they look as worse for the wear.

Politics as usual, just a little more turbulent...... :rolleyes:

I can't wait to see my fellow Americans expressions when they see the cuts coming up, thanks to that new deficit we are raising.

We can't mistake what is happening for cowardice..... it is simply flip-flopping, with the public wind, so as not to go down with the ship.

Too bad nobody notices that when it is time to elect a new captain........

[RickSp]

Now Bush is lying about lying.

Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials

To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists. Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today. It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true. Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful. Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact. It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics. The administration had little company in saying that Iraq was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The evidence for this claim was a dubious report about an attempt in 1999 to buy uranium from Niger, later shown to be false, and the infamous aluminum tubes story. That was dismissed at the time by analysts with real expertise. The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer.

[RickSp]

Another interesting viewpoint - Nick Kristof in today's NY Times:

As we puzzle over how to end our nightmare in Iraq, the central question is the one raised by The Times on August 7: "How much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavor to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for?" Not this TImes, though. It was The Times of London on Aug. 7, 1929, as a ferocious insurgency threatened the British occupation of Iraq. The British had also started out thinking that they were liberators, only to find that they had catastrophically underestimated Iraqi nationalism. They ended up sucked into what Lawrence of Arabia described as "a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor."

Iraq in the Rear-View Mirror

[Boetie]

These same politicians that got us into this mess by lying or pure stupidity are asking us to stay the course with them. Sure they can lie to us with their exit plan. Remember Nixon got elected because he said he would end the war. Turned out Nixon escalated the war and even considered blowing up a damn so that 200,000 civilians can die and he can get a giggle out of it. Protestors foiled that plan.

Americans have to get rid of the liars and weasles, this is the only solution. Fool me once fool me twice. I wasn't even fooled the first time, these politicians stank of sewer smell the very first drum roll to war came around, and that war yell came at a very suspect timing, in October just before election.

Bush Jr is a sewer.

[Apeman81]

Nothing like a timetable to keep the enemy guessing.

[RickSp]

Quote by: Apeman81 Nothing like a timetable to keep the enemy guessing.

The only thing that gets Iraqi politicians going, excluding possibly graft, is a deadline. And if the recent past is any indication, the longer we stay the larger the insurgency will grow, so setting a deadline might just help. "Staying the course" in a war that we are losing is merely stupid.

[rmnunez]

the longer we stay the larger the insurgency will grow

It would be interesting to see something to support this conclusion. As far as I can tell, based on the casualty rates and terrorist (or insurgency) incidents it doesn't seem like the insurgency is growing. I have seen more polls suggesting the disenchantment among Iraqis with the occupation has grown, but nothing showing the increasingly disenchanted are joining the revolution.

[Apeman81]

Quote by: RickSp The only thing that gets Iraqi politicians going, excluding possibly graft, is a deadline. And if the recent past is any indication, the longer we stay the larger the insurgency will grow, so setting a deadline might just help. "Staying the course" in a war that we are losing is merely stupid.

"Losing? BWAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

We set out to:

Remove Saddam - He's gone
Remove the Baath Party - They're gone too
Write a Constitution - Written and Ratified
Elect a Government - Voted and in office
Build a police force and army - even faster than the international terrorist effort can kill them
etc etc etc

You know, you don't have to agree with Bush or the reasons to go to war to recognize what's happening in Iraq. Why the hell are you so blind to the facts?
The majority of the "insurgents" are not Iraqis and have no place telling Iraqis how to govern themselves. But you don't care who kills U.S. troops or Iraqis loyal to their country. Your hatred of all things Bush has turned you into a blithering idiot, only able to parrot the cries of the Democrat politicians whose only goal is reacquire the power they so desperately crave.

Take off the blinders! Open you eyes and think for yourself.

[Sonart]

Quote by: Apeman They are, in this, cowards. This is why we, the people should take better care in selecting our political leaders. Too many on all sides of the aisle spend more effort assuring their continued power than using that power for good.

Quote by: Apeman Nothing like a timetable to keep the enemy guessing.

Problem is, Republican - and Democrat - supporters of the war are finding themselves between a rock and a hard spot -- the declining ability of our armed forces to maintain the force levels needed to stay in Iraq -- as Joe Klein points out in this weeks TIME Magazine...

--"But the wording of the resolution wasn't nearly so important as the subtext. Politicians of both parties felt the need to express some sort of dismay about Iraq. And no one offered an amendment calling for a more robust U.S. military effort to win the war. That now seems beyond the realm of political possibility.

"They're nervous. They see the polls," Senator John McCain, who opposed the resolution, told me last week. As always, McCain has been a model of stubborn independence and utter rectitude in matters of war and peace.

(McCain) has also made the strongest and most detailed strategic argument—most notably in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute—for a renewed effort to succeed in Iraq. He believes the war against Islamist radicalism should be the highest national priority. He is one of the few remaining American politicians who want to send more troops to the war zone. "I don't think I could get a majority for that," McCain said.

In fact, the Senator conceded that even if his plan were approved, he wasn't sure where the additional troops would come from. "It's very tough," he said. "We needed to start expanding the size of the Army three years ago."

"The future of our military is at risk," Murtha said in his emotional press conference, accurately reflecting the views of the uniformed brass. "Our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment."

But unlike McCain, Murtha does not seem to believe that the war against Islamist terrorism is the highest national priority. He said Iraq threatened to drain resources from "procurement programs that ensure our military dominance."--

..To be truly effective in our war in Iraq, we actually need more troops. But we can't raise enough troops as it is. Our Reserves are being exhausted, and recruiting replacements is down 20% and dropping.

.

[Sonart]

Quote by: Apeman We set out to: Remove Saddam - He's gone Remove Saddam - He's gone Remove the Baath Party - They're gone too Write a Constitution - Written and Ratified Elect a Government - Voted and in office Build a police force and army - even faster than the international terrorist effort can kill them etc etc etc

Except all that was supposed to have been accomplished within 6 months of 'Mission Accomplished', without the cost we've paid and continue to pay, and at the moment, it's neck and neck regarding which comes first... a new government or a civil war.

Most Americans would call this a fairly pyrrhic victory.

.

[PatrickHenry]

Quote by: Apeman81 The majority of the "insurgents" are not Iraqis

Evidence for this allegation?

[Sonart]

Quote by: Apeman The majority of the "insurgents" are not Iraqis

This is completely false.

Among Insurgents in Iraq, Few Foreigners Are Found

--"...foreign component of Iraq's two-year-old insurgency, estimated at between 4 and 10 percent of all guerrillas,..."--

.