Useful Idiots

CNN reports:

Congressmen call for U.S. withdrawal

The Republican congressman who pushed for "french fries" to be renamed "freedom fries" joined a bipartisan group of House members Thursday to call on President Bush to begin plans for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina said it is time for Congress to start talking about bringing American troops home from Iraq.

...The proposed House resolution calls on Bush to announce by year's end a plan for a withdrawal from Iraq that would begin by October 1, 2006.

"After 1,700 deaths, over 12,000 wounded and $200 billion spent, we believe it is time to have this debate and this discussion on this resolution," said Jones, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Other sponsors are Republican Rep. Ron Paul, a former Libertarian presidential candidate from Texas; Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, another Armed Services Committee member; and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination as an antiwar candidate last year.

...Lt. Gen. James Conway, chief of operations for the Pentagon's Joint Staff, said setting a deadline also would send the wrong message to the insurgents, encouraging them "to wait us out."

"If you look at it from the insurgents' perspective, they know our history, just like we study them," said Conway, who was a Marine commander in Iraq.

"And they see where we have withdrawn previously, in Vietnam, in Beirut, in Somalia, and nothing would make them happier, I suppose, than to think that there is a deadline out there," he told a Pentagon news briefing.

...Speaking at news conference Thursday, Jones said "no one is talking about cutting and running" but that it was time for the United States to begin handing over responsibility to Iraq's transitional government.

"Clearly we are giving the Iraqis every reasonable chance for democracy," he said.

"But at some time in the near future, the ultimate fact of Iraq will and should rest in the hands of Iraqis. We will continue to support them in their efforts, but they cannot forever be dependent upon America as a primary defense force in Iraq."

Kucinich said he hoped the proposal would be "the basis for the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq."

"It's right here, and it's happened because four members of Congress put aside any kind of differences that we may have had in the run-up to the war and the conduct of the war, and we're saying this is the way to bring our troops home," Kucinich said.


This is exactly the type of stuff our enemies want to hear. They want to know when we plan on leaving so they can plunge the country into complete chaos. Talk about not learning from the mistakes of our past and being doomed to repeat them!

Lt. Gen. James Conway is so right about the message a withdrawal date would send to the insurgents. They certainly would simply wait it out until we abandoned Iraq. Such a plan is idiotic. It would doom the chance for democracy to take hold and would almost guarantee civil war.

Jones says no one is talking about cutting and running. No? What is he talking about? He and the others are demanding a date for withdrawal. Would that be cutting and strolling?

Tonight on Letterman, Bill Clinton said that Iraq is not Vietnam. I wish these members of Congress would get both feet in the 21st century and stop viewing the present through the fogged over lens of the 60s.