Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoe";p="
What if there was a referendum (in the near future) asking this question: "would you prefer that U.S. troops leave Iraq." What if the majority of Iraqis voted "Yes" "we want U.S. troops to leave ,now".
We already know from surveys that the outcome would suggest a strong preference for U.S. withdrawal. Would you accept this (democratic) Iraqi decision and urge the administration to bring the troops home???
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I'm not a Bush supporter, so you didn't ask for my opinion, but I'm going to share it with you anyway.
The short answer is, I would "begin the process" of troop withdrawal as soon as possible. But there are several nuances to consider.
First of all, that's not something you can do overnight, it took months to get all those troops there and it'll take months to get them out.
Second, there are many forms of "withdrawal". That word doesn't imply just leaving Iraq in a vacuum. The military reality probably involves "redeployment", which means that a big fraction of our troops won't be coming home anytime soon, they'll just be moved to different locations so they can continue gathering intelligence and so on.
But yes, all things considered, I believe it's time that we started thinking about beginning the process of bringing our troops home.
Unfortunately this latest Zarqawi thing has thrown a monkey wrench into that concept, 'cause there will doubtlessly be reprisals by his minions. Casey is correctly considering a temporary increase in troop levels just to deal with that eventuality.
But if what the Bush administration claims is true, which is that there are roughly a quarter million Iraqi troops and policemen that have now been "adequately trained", then I'd suggest that the sooner they get their feet wet, the better off we'll all be.