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"The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home," he says.
Most of the civilized world has been wanting Bush to pull the US troops out of Iraq for ages now, because things are NOT going well. I see the above comment from him as further manipulation of the ignorant public that only "good" results will lead to troops coming home... as opposed to outside criticism (i.e. "unpatriotic" people, if they're Americans) being the reason.
Your thoughts?
I think that nobody has a clue how to put an end on the horrible situation in Iraq. The Democrats are afraid that a Democratic president might "inherit" the Iraq issue and how would he/she solve it? Let's not forget that the Democrats did not vote against this war in the first place. They were happy enough to jump on the band wagon when Bush played the "patriotic card".
The majority of countries who voted against the war in the UN (and were on the receiving end of American criticism and abuse for that vote) now lean back with a "told you so" attitude and do nothing while the allies drop out as much as they can and leave it to the USA to clean up the mess. The people of Iraq deserve better than that - they deserve that the international community helps them - but how?
Bush's speech just shows that he is a fundamentalist with no comprehension of reality - nothing new there. But Bush is history, the world has to come up with a plan how to heal the wounds of Bush's "war on terror". I have little hope that there will be any such plan in the near future.
That's one of the best replies I read lately on Queenzone. I fully agree with you there.
Furthermore, as far as I know the democrats want a strict schedule of getting the troops back home. I think I have to agree with Bush this time (and that doesn't happen that often!). If the situation permits, the troops can leave. They should not leave because the schedule says so. A war is not something that's being "scheduled". The US fucked up Iraq completely, and now they should leave that country in relative peace. Although I'm afraid that as soon as the US leave, a civil war will be the immediate result.
I find it weird. Recently Bush sent 30.000 militaries to Iraq (which now means almost all of the American soldiers are in Iraq or Afghanistan now I think).
Bush claimed a lot of times that it was time to (to Quote Pink Floyd) "Bring the boys back home", but I have a feeling that won't be until next year summer, or in the worst case, longer.
Sir GH<br><h6>ah yeah</h6> wrote:
Most of the civilized world has been wanting Bush to pull the US troops out of Iraq for ages now, because things are NOT going well.
Most of the civilized world didn't want Bush to invade Iraq in the first place. They knew that there was not enough reliable proof that there WMDs and links to Al-Qaeda.
Now, Al-Qaeda is spread all over Iraq.
Thanks Dubya
Mr.Jingles wrote:
Most of the civilized world didn't want Bush to invade Iraq in the first place. They knew that there was not enough reliable proof that there WMDs and links to Al-Qaeda.
Now, Al-Qaeda is spread all over Iraq.
Thanks Dubya
Exactly. But now that we're there and have made such a disgraceful mess of things, we can't, IMO, set a date for withdrawal. I think those calling for a specific time-line are being as unrealistic as Bush. And that's saying something.
What pissed me off the most during his speech was when he mentioned the chaos a withdrawal would create. Not once did he mention the chaos his invasion created.
Bottom line, the points in his speech were typical and predictable. His plan is no plan - unless you count the plan to keep the chaos going until he's out of office so the chaotic cleanup can become some other administration's problem.
His plan is to try and survive until 2008, and then he can run back to his ranch in Crawford and crawl up there, surrounded by all of his friends who still tell him that he was right and everyone else was wrong and nothing that happend with Iraq was anything he could have foreseen. Pffft. I sometimes think he'd leave now, if Cheney wasn't holding him in place.
It just prove right what I thought when Bush was elected back in 2000...I told people I didn't like the idea of Bush getting elected because he didn't appear to know his head from his butt and he'd be completely reliant on someone else to tell him what to do. Only at the time I thought it was his father he'd run to; not someone like Cheney. If only he'd have run to his father maybe the mess wouldn't be quite so bad now.
This is the closest to an "I'm sorry, I f*ed up" moment we are going to get from Bush. He'll never apologize even though he now recognizes what as mess he created when he invaded...he's too stubborn for that. So for the next year it's going to be Bush trying to get across that he knows he's screwed up without actually saying it, and being as obstructionist as he can be to the Democrats. He'd rather see Iraq descend even further into chaos than admit the Democrats were right.
And the only reason Democrats want a deadline for withdrawl is so that they can set it before they win the election and therefore the mess can be "over" before they take office and they won't have to deal with it. Like YV said, their greatest fear is they will inherit the mess, because most of them know that you can't pull the troops out now on a deadline...it's such a blasted mess you have to make sure that they can stand on their own before we leave.
We cannot leave now....we are going to be bogged down there for a long time now, thanks to complete ineptitude of Bush and his administration.
Same old tired neo-con hogwash, specially brewed to lead us into a weary sense of false security. I, for one, refuse to believe for a moment that we are 'winning a war;' the invasion of Iraq aside, we are currently making war on a concept. Recall how well this worked when the object of our aggression was drugs? Yeah.
Our troops are dying, the middle-east is in chaos, the majority of the world loathes us for fairly legitimate reasons...there are vast wounds here, which are only healable through exhaustive diplomacy and a complete restructing of our governmental mindset. Whether this election will herald a change of policy, or if the quagmire will endure for years to come, is unclear to all.
Bleh.