Reply #19: This really sounds like Game, Set , Match to me [View All]

[TayTay]

SEN. KERRY: But the fundamental differences, by any acknowledgment, were postponed. They came together, they agreed to have a committee that had the right to raise the fundamental issues, but they haven't resolved the fundamental issues.

SEC. RICE: Senator, to ask them to resolve it within a -- within several months, I think, would have been superhuman. Ask them --

SEN. KERRY: Well, you're the ones that set the date for the constitution with them.

SEC. RICE: No, but to ask them to get to a framework in which they can work in an evolutionary way to the resolution of differences that are centuries old, I think, is completely --

SEN. KERRY: Well, that is exactly the problem, that -- well, let me get to that with a question. I see the light's already on. It's incredible how fast it goes.

But many of our military leaders, Iraqi leaders and the Iraqi people themselves are now saying, in effect, that our military presence is as much a part of the problem as it is the solution.

General Casey, our top commander, recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee that our military presence, quote, "feeds the notion of occupation" and, quote, "extends the amount of time that it will take for Iraqi security forces to become self-reliant."

The Iraq Sovereignty Committee, made up of elected members of the Iraqi National Assembly, released a report in September stating that the presence of U.S. troops prevents Iraq from becoming fully sovereign.

A recent summary of numerous Iraqi public opinion surveys concluded that a majority of Iraqis, quote, "oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq and those who strongly oppose it greatly outnumber those who strongly support it."

So what do you say to this growing sense in our military leaders, who've told it to us when we visit Iraq, to the general sort of input of people who have spent a lifetime studying the region, that the presence is adding to the numbers of terrorists, adding to the perception of occupation, adding to the problem, and that it doesn't deal with the real problem, which is the political solution needed between Shi'a and Sunni?

SEC. RICE: Well, first of all, Senator, when you come to the political solution, I think you have to see that these people have come a long way in two and a half years.

Strike one: The Iraqi political establishment wants us gone because we are in the way of a political solution
Strike two: The Iraqi people see as as part of the problem, not the solution
Striek Three: Our own military has concluded that we are making it worse not better.

We need to get out (gradually, probably) because of this.

Ahm, where is that damn speech. I want this enumerated further.

Mass? What say you to this?