Position: Coalition troops should pull out
This position addresses the topic Post-invasion Iraq.
For this position
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"Iraqi leaders have responded only to deadlines. So we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get Iraq up on its own two feet — a clear deadline of July, 2007. As our generals have said, the war cannot be won militarily. “Staying the course” isn’t far-sighted; it’s blind."
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"The writing is on the wall - and on page after page of report after report. All leading to the same inescapable conclusion. Iraq has made us less safe; it's time to bring our troops home. After all, "It's what the people of Iraq want.""
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"We don't need more phony timetables to prolong the agony. We need a quick exit from a bad show."
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"So the British will not leave behind a peaceful Basra, but they are nonetheless right to leave it. The United States should take note and recognize that it is a delusion to believe that any foreign occupier can stop Iraqi factions hellbent on fighting for power. We owe the Iraqis our best efforts at mediation, but to insist on stability as a prerequisite for withdrawal is to commit to indefinite and fruitless military occupation."
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"As I have stated in the past, as long as U.S. military forces remain in Iraq, the Iraqis will allow our men and women to bear the brunt of all security actions and our forces will be targets. The Iraqi government, security forces and military have to be put on notice that we will redeploy our forces and that they will be responsible for their own country."
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"No one is guaranteeing Iraq will become some kind of paradise after we leave. There may well be genocide we have to deal with on an international basis sooner or later. But just as before, we can get the results we want if we bring people together and challenge the president."
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Even if it would have made sense otherwise, the price for staying demanded by the Iraqis was too high. The Iraqis refused to give U.S. troops immunity from prosecution for alleged crimes, a deal-breaker by any definition of that term. Indeed, that Iraqi leaders would make such a demand at this point borders on the outrageous. More than 4,400 American troops in Iraq have lost their lives. This country has spent more than a trillion dollars in the Iraqi adventure. After all this expenditure of blood and treasure, the United States should not have to beg anyone to stay.
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"As I have argued for over a year, a timetable for the redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq will help pressure the Iraqis to get their political house in order and will help the U.S. military refocus on defeating the global terrorist networks that threaten us."
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"The moral is clear -- we need to get out of Iraq, not because we want to cut and run, but because our continuing presence is doing nothing but wasting American lives. And if we do free up our forces (and those of our British allies), we might still be able to save Afghanistan."
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One strategy that the administration weighed last summer was to leave a tiny residual force, perhaps as few as 3,000 troops — not enough to secure the country, just enough to make a tempting and vulnerable target. Another would be to stay on uninvited. With a majority of Iraqis already seeing the United States as an occupier not a liberator, that would have been a bonanza for the Iranians and Islamist radicals alike.
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"Our military has done all it can do in Iraq, and the Iraqis want their occupation to end. I support bringing our troops home at the earliest practicable date, at a rate that will keep those remaining there safe on the ground. It's time that the White House and the GOP start working with Democrats in Congress to come up with a reasonable timetable for withdrawal and for handing the Iraqi government over to the Iraqis."
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"We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose."
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"But at this point, our presence is manifestly making things worse. Ask the Iraqis, who ought to know. In a poll released this week, 78% of Iraqis told researchers that the U.S. military presence is "provoking more conflict than it is preventing"; 71% said they want U.S. troops out within a year; 58% said they think inter-ethnic violence will diminish if the U.S. withdraws; and 61% think that a U.S. withdrawal will improve day-to-day security for average Iraqis."
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"If American troops begin pulling out tomorrow, Iraq surely will suffer a terrible spasm of bloody violence. But if we wait a year and then pull out, there is no reason to expect any different outcome. Quite the contrary: The longer we stay, the more lawless and chaotic the country becomes. And the more young Americans die in a war that no longer has an attainable goal."
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"Facts on the ground finally and utterly repudiate his entire rationale for war. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no connection to terrorists and 9/11. Trying to impose Jeffersonian democracy at the point of a gun on a tribal, theocratic society was a bad idea; the failure to do so has been an utter disaster. It's time to abandon the neoconservatives' grandiose, arrogant fantasy of using war to spur cultural and political transformation in the Middle East."
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"As long as foreign troops remain, the Iraqis will avoid responsibility for their own destiny, and the chances of holding their country together may be greater without foreign troops. It will be argued that there is a risk of Iraq becoming a base for international terrorism. But it is the American occupation of Iraq, like the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, that has become the magnet for the international jihadis."
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"After four years of war, more than $350 billion spent and 3,363 U.S. soldiers killed and 24,310 wounded, it seems increasingly obvious that an Iraqi political settlement cannot be achieved in the shadow of an indefinite foreign occupation. The U.S. military presence — opposed by more than three-quarters of Iraqis — inflames terrorism and delays what should be the primary and most pressing goal: meaningful reconciliation among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds."
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"Every day, George W. Bush asks young Americans to die in defense of an Iraq that has ceased to exist (if it ever did) in the hearts and minds of Iraqis. What Iraqis believe in are sectarian or tribal Iraqs -- a Shiite Iraq, a Sunni Iraq, an autonomous Kurdish Iraqi state, an Iraq where Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani or Moqtada al-Sadr or some other chieftain holds sway. These are the Iraqs for which Iraqis are willing to kill and die."
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"Finding peace in Iraq is much more likely if American troops leave. Most Iraqi violence can be traced to two causes: an insurgency whose goal it is to push the United States out of Iraq and a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. Were the United States to withdraw, the insurgency would collapse. And the Shiites and Sunnis won't ever recognize that they must deal with each other until American troops leave and they have no other option."
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"In Yugoslavia the solution, abetted by western intervention, was partition. In Iraq America began the same process by guaranteeing de facto autonomy to Kurdistan. That logic must now be followed to its conclusion."
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"We need to conclude this terrible mistake we have made in Iraq. Anti-Americanism is more robust now than in any period in our history because of Iraq. The international community is skeptical of U.S. intentions because of Iraq. Our Constitution has been trampled because of Iraq. Thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens have lost their lives because of Iraq."
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"In the Iraqi election the consensus of all leading parties was that there is a need for a timetable for American withdrawal. Only a timetable accompanied by, and spurring, negotiations among all parties will give hope for an end to the instability and violence. One lesson from Vietnam, Palestine and Northern Ireland is that many insurgent nationalists can be drawn in, isolating those addicted to nihilistic sectarian violence."
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"The mission in Iraq has changed and, therefore, so must U.S. policy change. Troops should not be policing a civil war. The current conflict in Iraq requires a political solution. Listen to what General Petraeus said today from Iraq: "The war cannot be won militarily. It can only be won politically." We further believe that Iraq must take responsibility for its own future, and our troops should begin to come home."
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"No truly functioning state exists in Iraq today, only a pseudo-"sovereign" government whose effective authority does not extend far beyond its own offices in the Green Zone. Moreover, Iraq is already, by any criterion, in the throes of civil war, chaos and even ethnic cleansing (euphemistically called "sectarian violence"), while the US occupation has bred hordes of native terrorists since 2003 and become a bloody mecca for foreign ones."
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"Ever wondered why there is so little federal money to replace the aging and dangerous Highway 520 Bridge? Taxpayers in my congressional district alone have sunk roughly $1.5 billion into funding the war so far — money that now can't be spent here at home."
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"If more Americans - including the president and those in Congress - had to make the personal sacrifice of sending a son or daughter to this war, some for a second or third time, or if they had to pay the ultimate sacrifice of losing a child in this war, we'd be long past the "support our troops" slogan. We'd be pulling out and concentrating on the real war: the war against terrorism."
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"As of March 19, the American toll in Iraq stood at 3,982 deaths and nearly 30,000 combat injuries. An additional 145 U.S. soldiers have committed suicide there. Such heavy losses are difficult to absorb, impossible to rationalize. Nobody knows for sure how many innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed during the U.S. occupation -- at least 18,600 are known to have died in 2007 alone. The monetary cost of the war is so high that the administration cannot -- or will not -- give Congress an accurate figure."
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"One way or another, now or later, we’ll have to pay the bill. Professor Stiglitz calculates that the eventual total cost of the war will be about $3 trillion. For a family of five like mine, that amounts to a bill of almost $50,000. I don’t feel that I’m getting my money’s worth. "
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"The real danger for Democrats in the Iraq debate isn't that they'll oppose the war too aggressively; it's that they won't oppose it aggressively enough. In 1972, Nixon attacked McGovern as a liberal extremist, which wasn't exactly wrong. But the Democratic Party has become more moderate since the Clinton years, and in the past two presidential elections the G.O.P. has attacked Al Gore and John Kerry less as ideological radicals than as soulless opportunists, weather vanes willing to say whatever it took to win."
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"It is clear that the great majority of Americans are ready to see the Iraq war draw to an end. It has been going on for four years, longer than World War II. Its financial cost stands at more than $400 billion, money that could have been spent on other, domestic needs of the American people -- health care, education, infrastructure repair and replacement, devising ways to stem the catastrophic flow of jobs overseas."
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"If “we are winning” and the surge is a “success,” then what is the rationale for keeping American forces bogged down there while the Taliban regroups ominously in Afghanistan? Why, if this is victory, does Mr. McCain keep threatening that “chaos and genocide” will follow our departure? And why should we take the word of a prophet who failed to anticipate the chaos and ethnic cleansing that would greet our occupation?"
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"In fact, history suggests that the consequences of a U.S. defeat will not be that dire. First, the risk of a regional Shiite-Sunni war is modest. The region has endured many civil wars: Algeria, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Yemen. While some have drawn in outsiders, none has led to war among those outsiders. Such meddlers tend to seek advantage in their neighbors' civil wars, not to spread them, which is why they rely on proxies to do their fighting."
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"Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles."
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"Most Londoners (as the rest of the country) were opposed to the Iraq war. Tragically, they have suffered the blow and paid the price for the re-election of Blair and a continuation of the war."
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"Our original war aim, the toppling of Saddam Hussein, has been achieved. It is now apparent that we are not even close to achieving the add-on mission of creating a democratic, law-abiding Iraqi state in which Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds share power."
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"Also Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that "war games" conducted for the U.S. military concluded that a withdrawal of American forces would not be "apocalyptic," according to the retired Marine colonel who oversaw them. The war games certainly painted a grim portrait of post-withdrawal Iraq -- which would effectively be split into three countries -- but far less dire than forecast by President Bush and his inner circle."
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"We simply can’t want to be in Iraq more than the Iraqis want us to be there. That poll of Iraqis, conducted by the BBC and other news organizations, found that only 22 percent of Iraqis support the presence of coalition troops in Iraq, down from 32 percent in 2005."
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"It is time for the waiting to end and for our troops to start to come home. That is why we propose to end the authorization for the war in Iraq. The civil war we have on our hands in Iraq is not our fight and it is not the fight Congress authorized. Iraq is at war with itself and American troops are caught in the middle."
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"Just yesterday, it was reported that the "new and improved" Iraqi government has not met any of the benchmarks. The surge is not working and deployment will mean even more deaths. Cheney and Bush have gotten us into an never ending hell. September will be here before you know it and with it will be another opportunity for our leaders to say ENOUGH!"
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"I hope that when President Bush discusses sending more troops to Iraq, knowing that we will have to pull out sooner rather than later, that the conversation comes around to the human suffering. Does anyone at the table ask about the personal anguish, the long-term effects, emotional, psychological and financial, on the families of those killed, wounded or permanently disabled?"
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"Congress must exert its constitutional authority and demand a vote before any escalation in Iraq. In October 2002, Members of Congress authorized a war against the regime of Saddam Hussein, not to send our troops into a civil war. I voted against that resolution and feel an escalation of this war only compounds the original mistake of going in the first place."
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"What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny? Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?"
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"The war has been an exercise in futility and mind-boggling incompetence, and yet our involvement continues — with no end in sight, no plans for withdrawal, no idea of where we might be headed — as if the U.S. had fallen into some kind of bizarrely destructive trance from which it is unable to awaken."
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"The American people want our troops out. The best reflection of this is that they elected Barack Obama to lead us out of Iraq. Obama needs to find solutions to the meltdown of the U.S. economy, not continue to waste billions of tax dollars occupying Iraq."
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"Mr. Bush calls his critics “irresponsible,” saying that they don’t have an alternative to his strategy. But they do: setting a timetable for withdrawal, so that we can cut our losses, and trying to save what can be saved. It isn’t a strategy for victory because that’s no longer an option. It’s a strategy for acknowledging reality."
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"Mr. Bush’s troop buildup was sold as a way to buy Iraqi politicians breathing room to finally address the tensions driving sectarian violence, including an equitable division of oil wealth and strategies to bring more Baathists and Sunnis into the Shiite-led government. Those goals have not been met, and the administration has virtually abandoned them."
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"In addition to denying expert advice and the voice of a nation, escalation sends the wrong message to the Iraqi government about charting its own future course. And it sends the wrong message about our priorities in the war on terror."
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"It is entirely possible that in the absence of a cumbersome and clumsy American occupation, Iraqis will make their own bargains and compacts, heading off the genocide that many seem to anticipate. Opponents of the war seem to have far more confidence in Iraqis' abilities to manage their affairs than do war advocates. Moreover, a U.S. withdrawal would finally compel the region to claim Iraq, forcing the Saudis, Iranians, Jordanians and others to decide whether a civil war is in their interests."
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"Minus the British, the United States will remain pretty much alone in Iraq. The British reasoning for leaving is impeccable. From their point of view, this is a clear case of ships leaving a sinking rat, to flip the old expression."
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"His intentions were noble, however naive and pigheaded. But the war was a horrible mistake. And as everyone comes to realize it was a mistake, continuing it becomes something much worse than a mistake."
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"The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region."
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"A public declaration that the U.S. intends to leave is needed to allay fears in the Middle East of a new and enduring American imperial hegemony. Right or wrong, many view the establishment of such a hegemony as the primary reason for the U.S. intervention in a region only recently free of colonial domination. That perception must be discredited."
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"Nearly a year ago, I went to Iraq to hear firsthand from U.S. troops, military leaders and Iraqis. This is what I heard from our military commanders: If the Iraqi government can't provide better security for its people in six months, U.S. troops in central and southern Iraq should leave. That time has now come and gone -- and so should our servicemen and women who are needlessly in danger."
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"No other single problem is as crippling to this country right now as the war in Iraq. Our ongoing troop presence is preventing a real Iraqi reconciliation. Maintaining 170,000 troops in Iraq not only stretches our military to the breaking point, it keeps us from having the troops available to deal with other emerging crises -- whether it is peace keeping or disaster response. We are spending upwards of $10 billion dollars a month in Iraq."
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"Fourth, it is simply antithetical to America's political character to tolerate military occupations. The American Revolution firmly established the principle that foreign rule was inherently ignorant of local conditions, unwelcome, and unjust."
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"Rather than talk about additional troops, it's time to begin redeploying troops out of Iraq immediately and engaging other governments and allies in crafting a diplomatic and political solution to the nightmare. That this administration could still think an escalated military option is a credible path to stability and democracy in Iraq is alarming, and indicative of how far removed from reality this president and his inner circle are."
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"It's been two weeks since the Iraq Study Group released its plan to change the course and bring our troops home. Since then, the President has been on a fact finding tour of his own administration -- apparently ignoring the facts presented by those in the military who know best. The President needs to put forth a plan as soon as possible, one that reflects the reality on the ground in Iraq and that withdraws our troops from the middle of this deadly civil war."
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"Once a war goes badly wrong and its justifications are shown to be lies, to insist that a "democratic" Iraq is visible on the horizon and that "we must stay the course" becomes a total fantasy."
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"In determining the need for U.S. forces, the key question is not whether they can bring peace to Iraq - they cannot - but rather when can Iraqi forces contain insecurity more or less as effectively as U.S. forces can? Provided the U.S. and Iraqi governments place their highest priority on improving the Iraqi army, its brigades should be able to replace ours without making things worse - at this point, a diminished but realistic definition of success."
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"With a long history of repelling occupying forces, the people of the Middle East are very sensitive to foreign occupation. So long as U.S. troops occupy those lands, millions of Iraqis and those in surrounding nations will see American troops as jihadist propaganda portrays us -- as occupiers there to repress them and plunder their oil. If we want them to believe we won't occupy Iraq indefinitely, then we need to act like we won't -- and get our troops out."
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"Ultimately, our military presence might be making the situation worse, as Iraqi political leaders hide behind our troops and refuse to make compromises necessary for peace. In fact, the very things that President Bush credits with helping reduce violence — the surge in U.S. troops in Baghdad, the arming of former Sunni insurgents and the cease-fire called by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — inflame sectarian tensions and obstruct political compromise in Iraq."
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"If British troops are indeed withdrawn from Iraq by next June, it will signal the end of the most shameful and disastrous episode in modern British history. Branded only last month by Lord Bingham, until recently Britain's most senior law lord, as a "serious violation of international law", the aggression against Iraq has not only devastated an entire country and left hundreds of thousands dead - it has also been a political and military humiliation for the invading powers."
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"With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, and support for the war in the U.S. having all but collapsed, the only real question on the table is how long the U.S. is going to drag out its inevitable pullout of combat forces. And the inevitable moral question that is inextricably linked to that slowly evolving set of circumstances is how to justify the lives that will be lost between now and the final day of our departure."
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"The truth is that no one knows what will happen to Iraq if U.S. troops pull out more or less precipitously. Maybe the Kurdish region will go its own way. Maybe the Shiites in the south will embrace Iranian hegemony. Maybe Osama Bin Laden will buy a condo in Baghdad. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybes are not sufficient reason for Americans to continue to die."
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"Yes, the best way to contain Iran would have been to produce a real Shiite-led democracy in Iraq, exposing the phony one in Tehran. But second best is leaving Iraq. Because the worst option -- the one Iran loves -- is for us to stay in Iraq, bleeding, and in easy range to be hit by Iran if we strike its nukes."
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"In 1968, Richard Nixon ran on a platform of ending the war with honor. It took 7 years to get the last American soldier out of Vietnam. In the meantime, tens of thousands more Americans died. Countless civilians died in Vietnam, in Cambodia and the killing fields, and millions more ultimately had to flee their homes. Dragging out the process of withdrawal will be tragically worse in terms of U.S. lives lost and in terms of the instability we will create by staying longer."
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"Killing fields? Iraq's already got them: A dozen or two corpses are found dumped in the streets each morning, and bombs go off daily. Boat people? Two million Iraqis have already fled the country, and perhaps 50,000 more leave each month. Could it get worse? Absolutely. But can we stop it?"
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"The presidential rationale for staying in Iraq is the same old, same old. People know it and are weary of it."
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"At this point, it should be obvious to all that, despite the countless tactical successes by our troops, we are losing this war and have no strategy to win it. To keep fighting is akin to placing more bets after you realize the roulette wheel is rigged."
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"Bush and Blair have needlessly alienated a continent and put their peoples at risk of a terrorist campaign. They now need a plan B and fast, a plan for global humility. They need to return to imperialism soft. They should shine their city on the hill and stop killing people on the plain."
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"Lieberman's defeat only illustrates what most Americans already know: Mainstream Americans are tired of watching young Americans come home in coffins from an unnecessary war, tired of reckless foreign policies that have increased rather than decreased the threat of terrorism and really, really tired of incumbents who still don't get it."
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"The U.S. has offered to join Iraq in another round of talks with Iran, but Tehran has so far declined. Of course, the U.S. and Iran have been waging a not-always-cold war since 1979. What's new is the relative military, political and economic weakness of the U.S. after five years in Iraq -- and the wealth and assertiveness of Iran. Why should the Iranians negotiate with the Great Satan when they can sit back and let their proxies bleed him white?"
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"Civilian deaths in March were 50 percent higher than in February, and there were a score of recent American deaths, and there is no evidence of political progress to support Petraeus' stab at optimism over the "fragile" situation in Iraq. Most absurd was the suggestion that the problem would all go away if Iran would only behave, when in fact American troops are being sacrificed on the pro-Iranian side of an internal Shiite power dispute."
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"The key to preventing an intensified civil war is US withdrawal from the equation so as to force the parties to an accommodation. Therefore, the United States should announce its intention to withdraw its military forces from Iraq, which will bring Sunnis to the negotiating table and put pressure on Kurds and Shiites to seek a compromise with them. But a simple US departure would not be enough; the civil war must be negotiated to a settlement, on the model of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Lebanon."
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"We must not be fooled by those who say there will be chaos if we leave Iraq. The leaders of the Iraqi factions can choose whether or not there will be chaos in Iraq. Prime Minister Maliki, Moqtada al Sadr, President Talabani, and Vice-President Hashimi -- they control the forces. In fact, it is widely understood that Moqtada al Sadr's call to his Mahdi militia for a cease fire has been critical to the reduction of violence."
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"Every day that US troops remain in Iraq drives up the cost of gains already made: the elimination of Saddam Hussein and the opening of a door, however narrow, to democracy. The fact is that America must plan its departure from Iraq without achieving many of its goals. The tragedy of the US intervention is compounded by the need to trade the lives of more American soldiers for the time needed for an orderly withdrawal that doesn't leave Iraq completely in the lurch."
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"The [House] plan calls for a pullout to begin by next March, and to take six months, with some troops necessarily left to pursue terrorists, train Iraqi forces, and protect U.S. diplomats. The plan's logic is blindingly obvious. If the benchmarks are met, Iraq will not need the large American presence. If, five years after the war began Iraqis continue to fight one another, it will be clearer still that the U.S. military cannot force peace."
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Against this position
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"Does [Ed Rendell] seriously believe such a retreat would not be seen as surrender and weakness, playing into the hands of jihadists, who would be emboldened to keep on fighting until they dominated all of Europe and then come after America? This is why liberal Democrats cannot be trusted to run the foreign policy of the United States."
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"Of course if our mission in Iraq were wrong or foolish or impossible, we would be right to abandon it. But recall that Americans have fought and died in Iraq to destroy a tyranny that was underwriting terrorism, threatening the peace of its region and the world--and torturing its own people to death. Americans died to put Iraq in the hands of a government that would terrorize neither its own people nor any other nor the world at large. Their mission was noble and right."
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"While consolidating bases is a short-term way to reduce troop requirements, fielding more adviser teams will eventually allow more Americans to come home. American troops embedded with the Iraqis they train usually require less support than conventional units; many rely on the Iraqis for food, shelter and basic defenses. Green Berets in 12-man teams have already replaced entire battalions of conventional forces in some Iraqi cities."
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"The cause of Iraq's dramatic death toll is easy to diagnose. There are not enough good guys with guns to keep the bad guys at bay. The United States and its allies need to send more troops."
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"The administration deserves credit for the strides it has made in training the Iraqi army. But for now we have to do much of the holding ourselves for it to be effective. That simply requires more manpower."
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"We have to remember the innocent Americans who were brutally slaughtered on 9/11. We have to remember that we fight not for empire, oil or dominion, but to defeat a relentless enemy determined to force us into submission to its deranged ideology."
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"Well, having just spent a week in Basra, the most charitable conclusion I can reach is that Mr Brown has been surveying the situation through a pair of rose-tinted binoculars. How else could he claim, as he did in the Commons, that the Government is able to reduce its troop numbers because "the Iraqis are now able to take responsibility for the security themselves"?"
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"No adult can possibly believe that secret talks (of which there have been many, throughout this administration) could isolate President Ahmadinejad. For us to ask for such talks will be seen in Tehran, and throughout the region, for what is is: retreat. And a great part of the credit for bringing us to our knees will go to Ahmadinejad, who has been guaranteeing this outcome in very forceful terms."
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"Make no mistake: Even if al Qaeda were driven completely from Iraq, it would remain a potent force elsewhere. But no group could suffer such a defeat without significant consequences for both prestige and recruitment. America's other enemies, meanwhile, would have to think twice about further angering a lethally adaptable adversary. The war in Iraq may be far from won, but there are plenty of good reasons to keep up the fight."
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"How much more powerful a tool would have been the actual defeat of the United States, the last remaining superpower, at the hands of Al Qaeda In Iraq? How much more dangerous would have been a terrorist movement with bases in an oil-rich Arab country at the heart of al Qaeda's mythical "Caliphate" than al Qaeda was when based in barren, poverty-stricken Afghanistan, a country where Arabs are seen as untrustworthy outsiders? Instead, Al Qaeda In Iraq today is broken."
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"We must kill - not capture - Muqtada, then kill every gunman who comes out in the streets to avenge him. Our policy of all-carrots-no-sticks has failed miserably. We delivered Iraq to zealots, gangsters and terrorists. Now our only hope is to prove that we mean business - that the era of peace, love and wasting American lives is over."
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In order to decrease the risk of the worst case scenarios for Iraq and America, our military leaders have long argued that it is critical to keep a small U.S. force in Iraq after this year, since the Iraqi Security Forces still lack key capabilities and the country's stability is not yet secured. In fact, every military leader I have spoken to in recent years with any responsibility for Iraq has told me we must keep at least 10,000 troops there after this year to ensure that our hard-won gains are not lost.
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"For sure, plenty of mistakes have been made and need to be corrected. But that does not mean the strategy of remaining in Iraq until the insurgency is defeated should change. The security of the region and the world depends on it."
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"Like earlier Americans, we have to choose between resolve and retreat, with no guarantees about how it will end. All we can be sure of is that the stakes once again are liberty and decency vs. tyranny and terror -- that we are fighting an enemy that feeds on weakness and expects us to lose heart -- and that Americans for generations to come will remember whether we flinched."
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"Simple withdrawal, with or without a timetable and surely under fire -- although American forces could probably cope with that -- would have the disadvantages of the first option, without the putative benefits. Iraq would almost surely become even more violent, with massacres of scores or even hundreds being replaced by massacres of thousands, and various regional powers straining to secure their own buffers and clients."
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"The power of the people can prove more powerful than any army or any band of ruthless terrorists. That is why we must continue the work our troops have pursued so nobly thus far in Iraq, which the terrorists themselves have called the war's central front. Terrorists know that when democracy can thrive in Iraq, terrorists will have lost once again."
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"If we no longer have the stomach for this fight--and it's going to be ugly, with few sterling VIP Iraqis who will make us proud--then we should at least be honest with ourselves. Leaving Iraq will not make our world better. We will be a defeated nation. Our holy-warrior and our more mundane enemies will know it. And we can rest assured that they will make us pay."
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"If Iraq is abandoned, the credibility of America and the West is lost. Iran's hopes of regional hegemony are assured. The Americans will have cut and run after enduring less than one-twentieth of the casualties they suffered in Vietnam; and from a battle more consequential, for it is against an Islamist enemy that is rising, instead of a Communist enemy in decline."
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"The only real hope of restoring order in the short term is to send American reinforcements. Unfortunately, pacifying the entire country would probably require 400,000 to 500,000 troops, an obvious nonstarter. A smaller number — 25,000 to 50,000 — might suffice to control Baghdad, but, in the current political climate, it seems unlikely that even that many will be sent."
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"When the troops on the ground say they believe in the mission and want to see it through, when they say that withdrawal will embolden the terrorists and endanger the Iraqi people, how can anyone take seriously the anti-war pronouncements of Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes?"
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"The Islamist movements that wait to cheer our withdrawal are not militarily strong, but they are good at what they call "the management of savagery", and they know that the West's attention span is much shorter than their own. It is a pity that we seem so determined to prove them right."
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"The notion, commonly expounded by Rep. John Murtha and other advocates of redeployment, that American troops are the main irritant causing the violence in Iraq is demonstrably untrue, as it does not explain the fact that the recent crisis results from Iraqis killing each other wherever U.S. forces are absent."
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Our friends did not have to be left out in the cold to seek Iranian protection. Three years and a won war had given Obama the opportunity to establish a lasting strategic alliance with the Arab world’s second most important power. He failed, though he hardly tried very hard. The excuse is Iraqi refusal to grant legal immunity to U.S. forces. But the Bush administration encountered the same problem and overcame it. Obama had little desire to. Indeed, he portrays the evacuation as a success, the fulfillment of a campaign promise.
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"The proponents of appeasement failed the world in 1939 and they will also fail today. Namely, those political leaders here at home and abroad who preach "dialogue" with Iran and rapid redeployment from Iraq -- based on an artificial timetable, and regardless of the situation left behind -- are risking the same big mistake."
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"Palestinian violence against Israel stopped because Israel forgot about the peace process and launched debilitating attacks against Palestinian terrorists. Similarly, our focus in Iraq should be on attacking al Qaeda and other specifically anti-American interests in that country. It should not be on orchestrating our own defeat and refusing to call it that."
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"Al-Qaeda in Iraq is in disarray, the Sunni insurgency in decline, the Shiite militias quiescent, the capital city reviving. Are we now to reverse course and abandon all this because parliament cannot ratify the reconciliation already occurring on the ground?"
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"But if, as it is hard to imagine otherwise, our departure from Iraq yields civil war, chaos, war lordism and terrorist safe havens — it is very likely that Iran will lurch in to harvest their advantages, Turkey will send in its army to stop an independent Kurdistan and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the other Sunni states will be sucked in to fend off Shi'ite Iran's hegemony. In that nightmare maelstrom, the 20 million barrels a day of oil shipped from the Persian Gulf — and the world economy with it — will be in daily risk of being cut off."
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"What our adversaries in the Middle East want from us is very simple: They want us out. Unless we are prepared to withdraw, not just from Iraq but from the entire region, and from elsewhere as well, we had better start figuring out how to pursue effectively--realistically--our interests and goals. This is true American realism. All the rest is a fancy way of justifying surrender."
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"A permanent Gulf regional security dialogue could emerge that includes Syria and Iran, and the United States could undertake a role as regional security guarantor. Preliminary discussions should lead to a more intensive dialogue with Iran in which security assurances and nuclear programs are discussed."
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"The message to those in search of elegant solutions is simple: This is a war, stupid! And what are the options in a war? One can fight to win. One can surrender to the enemy. One can panic and run away. These are the options in Iraq."
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"The irony is that the Dems' delusions and calls for surrender only make it more difficult to end the violence and defeat the terrorists now. Why should militias disband when America may be about to head for the hills? Why halt their suicide bombings when they seem to be pushing America to flee?"
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"In war, you accomplish your goal, which is winning, or you lose, or you arrive at a stalemate and await further developments. Exiting, without having won or achieved stalemate, is losing. When you face inferior forces and a further threat from their emboldened allies, exiting is also a mistake.
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"When we were having trouble in Bosnia, why didn’t we ask for help from neighborly Serbia? When we were trying to help El Salvador democratize, why didn’t we ask for help from the Sandinistas? When Kennedy was having trouble with Cuba, why didn’t he ask for help from the USSR? The only alternative to the surrenders on offer by the Democrats and by the “realist” Republicans is a renewed determination to win."
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"Before last week's election, only 40% said the war was a good idea and 55% called it a mistake. Yet disapproving of how the war is going is different from demanding an immediate end. Most polls on that question show ambivalence, with Americans frustrated but realizing that chaos and slaughter would follow if we left before Iraq is stable."
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"Iraq is not an unwinnable war: Rather, as the data just cited show, it is a war we have chosen not to win. And the difference between success and failure is not 300,000 more soldiers, as some would have it. One-tenth that number would make a large difference, and has done so in the past. One-sixth would likely prove decisive."
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"In Iraq, American policies have steadily undermined the Iraqi people's confidence that the United States has either the will or capacity to provide them the security they need and deserve. So they have turned to their own sectarian armed groups for the protection the Bush administration has failed to provide. That, and not historical inevitability or the alleged failings of the Iraqi people, is what has brought Iraq closer to civil war."
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"It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies."
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"But if "sectarian violence" means anti-American Shiites killing anti-American Sunnis, and vice versa, how much sleep should Americans lose over Bush's "failure" to stop it? That may sound cold, but the killers are free to end their violence whenever they like. Really, the only thing Americans should worry about regarding Iraq is quitting prematurely and emboldening terrorists."
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"Instead of looking for a face-saving way to lose in Iraq, President Bush could finally demand of his top advisers a strategy to succeed: provide the US force levels necessary to achieve even minimal political objectives. This could begin by increasing US troops in Iraq by at least 50,000 in order to clear and hold Baghdad without shifting troops from other parts of Iraq."
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America will pay a high price for defeat in Iraq. Our global credibility is seriously damaged—it is surely no accident that the weekend after President Obama announced that we were abandoning Iraq, President Hamid Karzai said that Afghanistan would stand with Pakistan against a U.S. attack. Why not? The Iranian and Pakistani narratives all along have been that the Americans will ultimately abandon their allies to their fate, while the neighbors will be around to exact revenge. President Obama has just reinforced that narrative before all the world.
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"Those calling for withdrawal may think it is the least painful option, but its benefits would be short-lived. The fate of the region and the world is linked with ours. Leaving a broken Iraq in the Middle East would offer international terrorism a haven and ensure a legacy of chaos for future generations. Furthermore, the sacrifices of all the young men and women who stood up here would have been in vain."
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"One irony here is that Barack Obama is promising a rapid withdrawal from Iraq on grounds that we can't defeat al Qaeda unless we focus on Afghanistan. He opposed the Iraq surge on similar grounds. Yet it is the surge, and the destruction of al Qaeda in Iraq, that has helped to demoralize al Qaeda around the world. Nothing would more embolden Zawahiri now than a U.S. retreat from Iraq, which al Qaeda would see as the U.S. version of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan."
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"What is new is that Petraeus's strategy and tactics, his patience and expertise, have succeeded and now allow some of the surge brigades to return home without replacement--and without a spike in killing. There's every reason to continue his strategy, not abandon it and force a withdrawal."
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"Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would."
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"There is a new general in town with a new strategy, and reports from Anbar and Baghdad are promising. All I ask -- as a soldier who fought next to Americans and Iraqis who died for Iraq's future -- is for the time necessary to give this winning strategy a chance."
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"What will happen if we abandon these children? Death will stalk them and their families. Al Qaeda will attempt to subjugate them. Shia militias will drive them from their homes or kill them. And they and their neighbors, and everyone in the Middle East, will know we left them to their fate. Everyone will know, "Never trust the Americans.""
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"Surely it can’t be a moral argument. Every liberal foreign policy do-gooder in Christendom wants America to interject itself in the Sudanese civil war unfolding so horrifically in Darfur. The high-water mark in post-Vietnam liberal foreign policy was Bill Clinton’s intervention in the Yugoslavian civil war. If we can violate the prime directive of no civil wars for Darfur and Kosovo, why not for Kirkuk and Basra?"
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"You can argue about our role in creating this new front and question whether it was worth taking that risk to topple Saddam Hussein. But you cannot reasonably argue that in 2007 Iraq is not the most critical strategic front in the war on terrorism. There's no escaping its centrality."
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"The Maliki government could falter. But it need not, if we do not. Unfortunately, four years of setbacks have conditioned Americans to believe that any progress must be ephemeral. If the Democrats get their way and Gen. Petraeus is undermined in Congress, the progress may indeed prove short-lived. But it's time to stop thinking so hard about how to lose, and to think instead about how to reinforce and exploit the success we have begun to achieve."
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"There were serious errors in judgment that have led to needless deaths and injuries. But that is for the historians to sort out. We must win this war, or Islamofascism will win it. There can be no turning back. The only thing the enemy understands is humiliation and defeat. They must be given a double dose of each so that they will abandon violence and oppression for generations to come."
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"History will record a number of military mistakes made in the Iraq war - and will surely note that al Qaeda's decision to engage the US-led coalition there represented a major strategic blunder. Al Qaeda certainly didn't have to do that - but it did anyway, and is paying a horrific price because of it. As Gen. Ricardo Sanchez has noted, Iraq "is exactly where we want to fight [al Qaeda]," because "this will prevent the American people from having to go through their attacks back in the United States.""
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"In Iraq, America was surrounded by enemies who were sure from the start that the great foreign power was destined to fail. They could not be given the satisfaction of a hasty American retreat. The stakes had grown: We were under the gaze of populations with a keen eye for the weakness of strangers. It was apt and proper that the leader who launched this war did not give up on it."
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"There may be scope for some force reductions; but what Iraq needs is a properly trained and equipped army, a competent police force and an external security guarantor. Some Iraqi brigades are fairly capable but few can yet act on their own. Al-Qaeda still has strongholds that must be smashed. US forces must remain engaged for years - and with them American policymakers."
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"Think of the impact around the world. If you're the enemy, you know you've won - all you have to do is wait for us to ship out. If you're one of our G.I.s, you're being told to keep risking your life, but however it turns out, we're bringing you home on an arbitrary schedule. If you're an Iraqi civilian friendly to us, we're leaving you to the wolves."
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"We need to acknowledge that the Iraq war wasn't a "distraction" from the War on Terror, as critics still complain, but its centerpiece. It's not mere coincidence that our success against al Qaeda globally comes along with success in Iraq. For all its setbacks and frustrations, the Iraq war drew jihadists into a battle they thought they could win, because it would be fought on their home turf - but which they're now losing disastrously."
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"As retired General Jack Keane told the New York Sun last week, "The tragedy of these efforts is we are on the cusp of potentially being successful in the next year in a way that we have failed in the three-plus preceding years, but because of this political pressure, it looks like we intend to pull out the rug from underneath that potential success." [...] Such a frivolous and thoughtless betrayal of our fighting men would be too contemptible to be called tragedy."
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"We didn't intervene in Iraq primarily to save the Iraqi people. We went in mostly for reasons of our own, to protect our interests and our allies from the menace of a serial aggressor whose domestic repression was of a piece with his desire for regional domination. And now that we are in Iraq, the United States, not just the Iraqi people, will suffer the consequences of our failure."
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"By now it should be obvious that the "light footprint" approach has not worked. It has increased, not decreased, resentment of the United States because Iraqis are aggrieved by the breakdown of law and order. Yet there appears to be no serious rethinking of this flawed strategy at either the Pentagon or the White House."
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"Now Democrats running for president have thought deeply and produced their own Iraq policy: They want to cut force levels too early and transfer responsibility to Iraqis before they are ready, and they offer no plan to deal with the chaos that would result six months down the road. In essential outline, they have chosen to duplicate the early mistakes of an administration they hold in contempt."
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"Veterans know firsthand that numerous mistakes have been made in the war. But that does not change the unfortunate reality: Iraq today is the front line of a global jihad being waged against America and its allies. Both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have said so."
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"Political hucksterism and poll-pandering on Capitol Hill amount to stabbing our troops in the back. Period. The insistence that success or failure will be determined beyond doubt by September is pure political quackery. The military operations and political maneuvering in Iraq are infernally complex. The earliest we might know anything will be around Thanksgiving - and all we'll know then is whether or not the Iraqis are getting on board in a serious way. "
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"With a territorial base, radical Islamist and Baathist forces would find ways to damage our interests here and abroad. Worse, our withdrawal would tacitly establish the principle, which we forcibly rejected in Afghanistan and more recently in Somalia, that we are prepared to live with a regime dedicated to our destruction even when we might be in a position to do otherwise."
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"Our troops have succeeded in improving security conditions in precisely those parts of Iraq where the "surge" has focused. Al Qaeda has shifted its operations to places like Diyala in large measure because we have made progress in pushing them out of Anbar and Baghdad. The question now is, do we consolidate and build on the successes that the new strategy has achieved, keeping al Qaeda on the run, or do we abandon them?"
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"Wonder what Iraq would look like if we left tomorrow? Take a look at Gaza today. Then imagine a situation a thousand times worse. We need to stop making politically correct excuses. Arab civilization is in collapse. Extremes dominate, either through dictatorship or anarchy. Thanks to their dysfunctional values and antique social structures, Arab states can't govern themselves decently."
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"Al-Qaeda in Iraq is now on the run and in the midst of stunning and humiliating defeat. As for the Shiite extremists, the Mahdi Army is isolated and at its weakest point in years. Its sponsor, Iran, has suffered major setbacks, not just in Basra, but in Iraqi public opinion, which has rallied to the Maliki government and against Iranian interference through its Sadrist proxy. Even the most expansive American objective -- establishing a representative government that is an ally against jihadists, both Sunni and Shiite -- is within sight."
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"The impact of withdrawing our forces can only give encouragement to the still-dangerous al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), as well as the Iranians who continue to use Shi'ite militias as proxies to fight U.S. and Iraqi forces. Further, we will have undercut the political groups, clans and tribal leaders who have aligned themselves with us. Every faction will be hedging their bets."
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"Everyone wants to see the day when U.S. forces can draw down, leaving the main job of security to Iraqis while staying available to pursue al Qaeda. But the timing of that decision should take place only when U.S. commanders on the ground believe that Iraqis can hold the gains so painfully won. The sheikhs who are now cautiously moving our way in Anbar province will not continue to do so if they can count the days to America's withdrawal."
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"Despite four years of failed policy, the strategy we have in Iraq today is sound, both in principle and in practice, as my combat tour in Iraq confirmed. Gen. Petraeus is bringing safety and stability to Baghdad and Anbar Province, putting insurgents on the run. Now it's a question of whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and wobbly Republicans will give him the time and resources he needs."
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"In fact, Mr. Obama can't afford not to update his Iraq policy. Once he has the conversations he's promising with U.S. commanders, he will have plenty of information that "contradicts the notion" of his rigid plan. Iraq's improvement means that American forces probably can be reduced next year, but it would be folly to begin a forced march out of the country without regard to the risks of renewed sectarian warfare and escalating intervention in the country by Iran and other of Iraq's neighbors."
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"Iran's purpose in sponsoring attacks on American soldiers, after all, is clear: It hopes to push the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, so that its proxies can then dominate these states. Tehran knows that an American retreat under fire would send an unmistakable message throughout the region that Iran is on the rise and America is on the run. That would be a disaster for the region and the U.S."
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"The sacrifices are real. But the troops are also fighting, and winning. The young soldiers believe in their mission. Perhaps they could be given a chance to succeed. Perhaps our elected officials should stop thinking of our soldiers as victims, but rather do them the courtesy of understanding them as fighters in a just and necessary cause."
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"How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008."
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"Shiite death-squad activity and executions in Baghdad have significantly decreased since January. In Anbar Province and increasingly in Diyala Province, tribal sheikhs have turned against al Qaeda and are now siding with American and Iraqi Security Forces (these are examples of "bottom-up" political reconciliation for which we had been hoping). Attack levels in Anbar have reached a two-year low. Ramadi, once among the most dangerous cities in Iraq, is now dramatically safer."
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"Gen. Dave Petraeus and his subordinate commanders are by far the best team we've ever had in place in that wretched country. They're doing damned near everything right - with austere resources, despite the surge. And they're being abandoned by your elected leaders."
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"After she sent a letter on the subject to DoD, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman responded by warning bluntly that premature discussion of withdrawal "reinforces enemy propaganda" that the United States will abandon our allies in Iraq — as we previously did in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kerry responded by introducing legislation requiring a Pentagon briefing on an Iraq pullout — in other words advertising U.S. willingness to abandon another ally."
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"Bin Laden and Zawahiri's own words tell us that the American project in Iraq jeopardizes everything their group stands for: These two top leaders of al Qaeda have promised the people of the Middle East that al Qaeda will protect Muslim soil from the "Crusader-Zionist" invaders, even if the region's rulers will not, and even if doing so meant cooperating with the "apostate" Saddam."
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"Yesterday, in fact, officials announced the capture of the highest-ranking Iraqi leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. And Gen. Peter Pace, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared that "a sea change" is taking place "in many places here," in terms of security. But despite having voted to confirm Petraeus - and to give him until September to show achievements - Dems have no interest now in what he has to say. "
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"Anti-American terrorists and fanatics worldwide will be emboldened. Iraq would emerge, in Senator John McCain's words, "as a Wild West for terrorists, similar to Afghanistan before 9/11." Once again -- as in Vietnam, in Lebanon, in Somalia -- the United States would have proven the weaker horse, unwilling to see a fight through to the finish."
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"The US military cannot be expected to maintain a force of this strength engaged in this form of combat indefinitely. It does not need to. It only has to stay until the point where sufficiently large numbers of the Iraqi Army and police units are in place and there is a political settlement in Baghdad that all sides deem acceptable.If the will is there, much of what needs to be accomplished could be realised in several months, not several years."
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"Democrats, meanwhile, have given up even pretending that a congressionally imposed bug-out won't produce a bloodbath on the scale of the nightmare inflicted on South Vietnam and Cambodia the last time they forced an American president to pull out of an unpopular war. Indeed, they understand full well what would happen - but don't care. That a growing number of Republicans are more concerned with their own re-election than with the consequences of a forced withdrawal is tragic. "
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"The reality, he said, is that an early US departure would put us about midway through the first of a five-reel Hammer Horror flick, with unimaginably gruesome scenes still to come. If the 160,000 US troops now keeping fissiparous components of Iraqi society apart were to leave, imagine the consequences. The sectarian bloodletting would eclipse even the tragedy we have witnessed so far."
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"A year ago, it appeared that the only way to win back the Sunnis and neutralize the extremists was with great national compacts about oil and power sharing. But Anbar has unexpectedly shown that even without these constitutional settlements, the insurgency can be neutralized and al-Qaeda defeated at the local and provincial levels with a new and robust counterinsurgency strategy."
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"But given the risks of withdrawal, the calculus cannot be so simple. The generals who have devised a new strategy believe they are making fitful progress in calming Baghdad, training the Iraqi army and encouraging anti-al-Qaeda coalitions. Before Congress begins managing rotation schedules and ordering withdrawals, it should at least give those generals the months they asked for to see whether their strategy can offer some new hope."
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"Lynch told reporters, "What I believe is (that) al Qaeda has worn out its welcome. They've overplayed their hand, and their tactics have indeed backfired." More Iraqis are coming forward to share intelligence in ways that have not occurred before. U.S. troops are seizing weapons caches, which should reduce the number of bombs used against American forces. Lynch also noted that Iraqi troops are beginning to identify as Iraqis, not simply as Sunnis and Shiites. "
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"Mr. Crocker is referring, of course, to the possibility of far nastier violence if the U.S. departs before Iraqi security forces can maintain order. Some will denounce this as a parade of horribles designed to intimidate Congress, but we also recall some of the same people who predicted that a Communist triumph in Southeast Asia would yield only peace, not the "boat people" and genocide. Those Americans demanding a U.S. retreat in Iraq will be directly responsible for whatever happens next."
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"Our staying power, unflinching persistence in the face of adversity, muscular capacity to impose order on chaos and eventual slaughtering of terrorists who are trying to drive us out will do more to win the "hearts and minds" of potentially radical Islamists around the world than all the little sermons about our belief in Islam as the religion of peace. As Osama bin Laden once famously observed, people follow the strong horse."
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"Violence in Baghdad and Anbar Province is down dramatically, grassroots political movements have begun in the Sunni Arab community, and American and Iraqi forces are clearing al Qaeda fighters and Shiite militias out of long-established bases around the country. This is remarkable because the military operation that is making these changes possible only began in full strength on June 15."
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"But if Republicans are rushing to desert our troops and spit on the graves of heroes, the Democratic Party at least has been consistent - they've supported our enemies from the start, undercutting our troops and refusing to explain in detail what happens if we flee Iraq. So I'll tell you what happens: massacres. And while I have nothing against Shia militiamen and Sunni insurgents killing each other 24/7, the overwhelming number of victims will be innocent women, children and the elderly. "
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"It's true that there's plenty of bad news out of Iraq - just as there are signs of progress. Congress is due an interim status report next weekend, and the bad guys know that as well as anyone, which is why we've been seeing such bloodcurdling violence of late. The bad guys are well aware that every savage market blast, every blownup G.I. patrol gnaws away at America's national resolve that much more. That's their plan. It works."
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"The surge has succeeded in reducing sectarian killings in Baghdad and civilian casualties overall, but at the cost of increased U.S. casualties and without the Iraqi legislative accomplishments that were established as “political benchmarks.” Those benchmarks shouldn’t be fetishized. The reason that they were considered so important is that they were thought necessary to entice Sunnis away from the insurgency. Instead, the Sunnis have swung our way anyway, in reaction to al Qaeda brutality and to our strength."
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"Democrats argue that the present Sunni-Shiite fighting is caused by the U.S. presence. Withdrawal, they argue, would compel all Iraqis to settle their differences by compromise. This argument is so spectacularly at odds with the facts -- principally the fact that the U.S. presence restrains rather than provokes Sunni-Shiite warfare -- that it has to be an argument made in bad faith."
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"If the president commits the necessary resources along the lines recommended by Keane-Kagan, the radicalization of Iraq can likely be reversed. The political and democratic possibilities in Mesopotamia remain greater than most in Washington's foreign policy establishment imagine."
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"There seems to be only one hope for persuading the Democrats to support staying in Iraq. Let's just beat the rush and call Iraq a humanitarian crisis now. It surely is already. And if we leave prematurely, Iraq will undoubtedly give Darfur and Yugoslavia a run for their money as a humanitarian horror show."
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"Those who call for an "end to the war" don't want to talk about the fact that the war in Iraq and in the region will not end but will only grow more dangerous."
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"The trends are encouraging, but little about the Iraq war has been predictable. The United States has to retain the agility to achieve broad goals in case of setbacks, such as a temporary upsurge in violence around the elections or a need by Iraqi forces for U.S. backup."
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"Oddly, the left has tended throughout the years to favor intervening in civil wars in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and (now) Darfur. If we were to leave Iraq and it descended into a genocidal bloodletting, would the George Clooneys of the world favor a new intervention on humanitarian grounds? Or does the watch-phrase ''never again'' have an Arab exception?"
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"The worst mistake the United States could make would be to allow its frustration with Iraqi political leaders to cause it to abandon the military strategy that has delivered that progress. As long as Baghdad neighborhoods are continuing to recover, refugees are trickling home, and Sunni and Shiite militias are helping to keep the peace rather than hunting each other, the U.S. mission in Iraq will be serving a vital purpose."
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"Now it's up to US and Iraqi politicians to use the relative stability provided by the surge to lay the groundwork necessary to forge a stable, functioning Iraqi government. There will be setbacks. There will be further violence. And, sadly, there will be an uptick in American casualties. But the fact remains that the war in Iraq has been turned around - thanks to Gen. Petraeus and his troops, who took the fight to the enemy, and to President Bush's willingness to risk all by changing course."
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"Bush is the true realist here, because he sees the Iraq War in context. Whatever role Saddam Hussein may have played in terrorism against the U.S., Iraq without him is still too frail to stand on its own. The damage will not be contained if it falls."
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"Whereas, a year ago, al Qaeda in Iraq was entrenched in Anbar province and Baghdad, now the forces of Islamist extremism are facing their single greatest and most humiliating defeat since the loss of Afghanistan in 2001. Thanks to the surge, the Sunni Arabs who once constituted the insurgency's core of support in Iraq have been empowered to rise up against the suicide bombers and fanatics in their midst -- prompting Osama bin Laden to call them "traitors.""
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Mixed on this position
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"The American people will support a cause that is noble and necessary, but not one that is unwinnable. And without a central Iraqi government willing to act in its own self-defense, this war will be unwinnable."
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"Bush's aim of making Iraq a democracy and projecting American power in the region as a way of fighting the war on terrorism is a failure. The invasion has only improved al-Qaida's ability to recruit terrorists and undermined U.S. long-term interests in the region. It has, for sure, made Iran the regional power. The question once the elections are out of the way will be how best to deal with those consequences."
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"Indeed, I continue to believe that everyone has us where they want us in Iraq: We’re holding up the floor for Iraqi politicians to do their endless tribal dance; we are bogged down and within missile range of Iran, so if we try to use any military force to disrupt Tehran’s nuclear program we will pay a huge price; and as long as we are trapped in Iraq, we will never even think about promoting reform elsewhere in the Arab world — to the relief of all Arab autocrats."
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"“Awful” would be carrying out that threat to leave Iraq by a fixed date because Iraqis prove too angry and atomized to reach any deal. The fires of madness now raging in Iraq — people beheading each other, blowing up each other’s mosques — would all intensify. A U.S. withdrawal under such conditions would be messy and shameful. But when people are that intent on killing each other there’s not much we can do. "
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"Either we just get out of Iraq in a phased withdrawal over 10 months, and try to stabilize it some other way, or we accept the fact that the only way it will not be a failed state is if we start over and rebuild it from the ground up, which would take 10 years. This would require reinvading Iraq, with at least 150,000 more troops, crushing the Sunni and Shiite militias, controlling borders, and building Iraq’s institutions and political culture from scratch."
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"At this late date, the United States has only one card left to play in Iraq: the threat to leave immediately. Except for Sadr, virtually no one in Iraq's political class wants that to happen. We must wield that threat as dramatically as possible, and, if Iraq's leaders don't respond, leave as fast as we humanly can."
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"Iraq still deserves one last chance — as long as we don't confuse deadly stubbornness and perseverance. If, at this late hour, Iraqis in decisive numbers prove willing to fight for their own freedom and a constitutional government, we should be willing to remain for a generation. If they continue to revel in fratricidal slaughter, we must leave."
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"What has become of our dreams for democracy when today's Iraqi police are worse than Saddam's and the most humane possibility for the country is a military government? The answer is that Arab civilization has revealed itself as a catastrophic failure."
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"We concede that an American withdrawal would reward our enemies, especially al-Qaida and Iran, with a major victory. Additionally, the fighting that would inevitably fill the vacuum of a U.S. departure could engulf neighboring countries. So the case for the U.S. remaining can be made. But to date, the discredited Bush administration has failed to make it. Unless and until it does, a phased withdrawal looks like the best option."
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"If the positive trends continue, proponents of withdrawing most U.S. troops, such as Mr. Obama, might be able to responsibly carry out further pullouts next year. Still, the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable; Iraq's 2009 elections will be crucial."
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"This war has reached the point that merely prolonging it could make a bad ending even worse. Without a real plan to bring it to a close, there is no point in talking about jobs programs and military offensives. There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq."
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"I share the concern of what would happen to Iraq if the United States pulled out precipitously. I share the concern over what will happen if the United States stays. I share the concern of those who say that no matter whether it stays or goes the outcome will be the same."
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