Dean: US Won't Win in Iraq
 Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.
| There's his first idiocy: the Democrats coming together on anything? |
Dean made his comments in an interview on WOAI Radio in San Antonio. "I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."
 Dean says the Democratic position on the war is 'coalescing,' and is likely to include several proposals. "I think we need a strategic redeployment over a period of two years," military expert Dean said. "Bring the 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops home immediately. They don't belong in a conflict like this anyway. They need to be ready to protect our baby ducks and other waterfowl. We ought to have a redeployment to Afghanistan of 20,000 troops, we don't have enough troops to do the job there and its a place where we are welcome.
| So Bush is wrong for keeping troops in Iraq too long and wrong for not keeping troops in Afghanistan long enough, even though when we had more troops in Afghanistan the Dems were against it, and the troops we have in Afghanistan now are sufficient to do the necessary work. |
And we need a force in the Middle East, not in Iraq but in a friendly neighboring country to fight (terrorist leader Musab) Zarqawi, who came to Iraq after this invasion. We've got to get the target off the backs of American troops.
My choice for the neighboring country would be Syria.
| Your choice, my choice, all our choices would be wrong; whichever country you picked Howlin' Howard would be upset. |
Dean didn't specify which country the US forces would deploy to, ...
... but he said he would like to see the entire process completed within two years. He said the Democratic proposal is not a 'withdrawal,' but rather a 'strategic redeployment' of U.S. forces. "The White House wants us to have a permanent commitment to Iraq. This is an Iraqi problem. President Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein and that was a great thing, but that could have been done in a very different way. But now that we're there we need to figure out how to leave. 80% of Iraqis want us to leave, and it's their country."
| 80% of Iraqis want us to leave when the job is done; 80% also understand if we leave too quickly there will be a civil war. |
Dean also compared the controversy over pre-war intelligence to the Watergate scandal which brought down Richard Nixon's presidency in 1974. "What we see today is very much like what was going in Watergate," Dean said. "It turns out there is a lot of good evidence that President Bush did not tell the truth when he was asking Congress for the power to go to war.
What part was wrong --
1) Saddam was a genocidal mass murderer?
2) Saddam had defied the 1991 Ceasefire agreement?
3) Saddam had defied 17 separate UN resolutions?
4) Saddam had started two pointless wars?
5) Saddam had used poison gas on his own people and on Iran?
6) Saddam had links to various terrorist groups?
7) Saddam had WMD (of some kind), and was itching to have more?
Sure, we didn't find WMD, much to just about everyone's surprise, but tell me what was wrong. |
The President said last week that Congress saw the same intelligence that he did in making the decision to go to war, and that is flat out wrong. The President withheld some intelligence from the Senate Intelligence Committee. He withheld the report from the CIA that in fact there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq), that they did not have a nuclear program. They (the White House) selectively gave intelligence to the United States Senate and the United States Congress and got them to give the go ahead to attack these people."
I wonder if we will see this anywhere in the MSM.
| See above, Howard. What part of the intel was withheld that would have caused you to change your mind? |
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