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Harry Reid: "1,000,000 Iraqis Have Been Killed Since The War Started"
Reno Gazette-Journal reporter Anjeanette Damon sat down with U.S. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid to speak about the war in Iraq...:Q: You disagree with the assessment President Bush and Gen. Petraeus put forth this week. How do you think the course should be changed? A: All you have to do is look at what they said. Nothing has changed since the surge started. Today, now we learn that 1 million Iraqis have been killed since the war started. A million. That's pretty hard to comprehend: 3,800 Americans, 30,000 wounded. More than 2,000 double amputees. The president, of course boasts about how well things are going. Q: How should the course be changed? A: We should do what my amendment said we should do: start redeploying troops immediately and have all the American troops out of Iraq by the first of April, except those who are involved in counter-terrorism. The original amendment said protecting our assets and it also said training Iraqis. Our new amendment we will offer next week will not include training Iraqis. We have spent billions of dollars training Iraqis and they should be trained up pretty good now. Q: There's been talk that you were working on a less aggressive withdrawal in order to persuade Republicans to get to that 60 votes. A: We're doing some other things. We hope to get more Republicans to support the Webb amendment. (It would extend the amount of time troops are home between deployments.) Last time we got 56 votes. (U.S. Sen.) Tim Johnson, D-S.D., was still ill. His being back will make it 57. We need three more Republicans. We hope that can be done. Q: You don't think you'll get 60 votes for the "bring them home by April" amendment? A: I think it will be very tough to get that. Most Democrats will vote for it, but Republicans are pretty much sticking with the president in this endless war. We had a few brave souls that broke away, and I appreciate that. We need a few more. We need 10. At this stage the best we've done is seven. Q: What do you think about President Bush's premise that stability in Iraq is necessary for the security of this country and the Middle East region as a whole? A: It's hard for me to be pleasant in answering that question. He's the one who created all these problems from the worst foreign policy blunder in history of our country. The Middle East was not in the shape it's in now. Q: Do we have a responsibility to help create stability there? What do you think our role should be in that region? A: I think our role should be counterterrorism, going after al-Qaida and protecting our resources there. That should be it. We should get out of there. Iraqis, let them handle their own concerns. They don't need us. They got along for a long time without us. It's a rich country. It's not as if they are looking for handouts... Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-09-16 |
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