Soldiering On ABC News Learns of Plans to Keep Troops in Iraq Beyond 2009

[RamboLiberal]

Source: ABC News

U.S. officials tell ABC News that the troop levels in Iraq cannot be maintained at the present level, either politically or practically, with the military stretched so thin.

But that does not imply an immediate drawdown. Officials tell ABC's Martha Raddatz the senior commanders in Iraq -- Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno and Gen. David Petraeus -- want the surge to continue until at least December, and expect to report enough progress by September to justify the extension.

The drawdown would begin in February 2008, although each of the two generals supports a slightly different plan.

Plan one, which officials say is being pushed by Odierno, calls for a reduction in troops from roughly 150,000 today to 100,000 by December of 2008.

Petreaus champions a slightly different approach that would be to cut the troops down to roughly 130,000 by the end of 2008, with further reductions the following year.


Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/IraqCoverage/story?id=3236822&page=1

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Going to wait till 2009 and a new President. If a Repuke we'll be there for at least another 4 years or war whichever comes first. If the right Dem then we may get out.

[acmavm]

1. Make the oil company ceos and board of director member cough up

their kids. And make them foot the bills. They're the only ones who stand to benefit. Oh yeah, and Dick Cheney's entire family tree. Send their sorry asses pronto.

[KamaAina]

2. Oh, please. "They're the only ones who stand to benefit." Pshaw!

What about the defense contractors? :sarcasm: Ike warned us...

[acmavm]

13. Yeah, when you're right, you're right. Our own old, fat, and very evil

Dick Cheney has made a bundle off this mess.

And our own Diane Feinstein and her hubby, what's his name? Richard Blum?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. A purely political schedule.

Time for these guys to be called to testify before congress. They are not in the business of making decisions to shore up the political fortunes of the repukes.

[tabasco]

4. Does this surprise anyone?

Iraq is the goose that lays golden eggs for the robber baron war profiteers.

We will have to pry it from their greedy, murderous claws.

That's why I'm so disgusted with the Dem cave-in on funding. With their gutless concession, they became part of the problem.

[mike_c]

8. watch them do it again in September....

Betcha.

[peacetalksforall]

5. The only fair thing - for our sanity. If this WH demands

more killing and wants to defy the ME, let the oil companies pay for private soldiers and let them be the ones to get killed. Let them pay for their own helicopters, vehicles, equipment, and service contracts with Halliburton Bechtel. Out of their profits. Enough of the sham of patriotic deaths of our kids.

Make this surge and purpose true to what it is - an oil company takeover of the oil. (just as DUers said from the beginning.)

Notice that this PNAC WH has NEVER EVER said that they are taking the oil for the benefit of the American people. Oe even the UK people. Or Israeli people.

They never promised that we would get the oil, they only promised that citizens should be patriotica about their oil take which might end up going to Japan and friendly countries..

SOme day some brave soul will place a tombstone on their dead child's grave that says - life given for Exxon/Mobil.

More truth. Vote for candidates who deliver truth.

[Ilsa]

11. Maybe the flags for Memorial Day should look like this:

Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming...

[IndianaGreen]

6. Some of the Democratic Presidential candidates have spoken of keeping troops in Iraq beyond 2009

and keeping US bases in Iraq in perpetuity in order to fight Al-Qaeda, protect the oil, and defend Israel. Google Hillary and Obama's recent speeches, starting with Hillary's AIPAC speech early this year.

[libodem]

7. The only reconstruction going on over there are Military bases

and that palatial embassy. Screw the Iraq people, the kids, the moms, the babies. Who the hell cares if they have any clean water or more than a couple of hours of electricity. The landscape looks like a pile of rocks and rubble. It's all bombed out and crumbled chunks of adobe. Our boys should be manning big trucks full of bottled water and sacks of grain and beans. They should be handing out food boxes and generators for home use. But HELL NO. OH, HELL, NO! It's go to homes with some tortured out, name, that somebody gave up, while naked, with a female officer, taunting the configuration of the genitals and manhood and some guy shooting pictures of his butthole and threatening anal rape...you'd name off any friend, neighbor, cousin, friend, you could think of to keep foreign objects out of your a-hole. You know our advanced, modern, state of the art intelligence gathering techniques. Hell, yeah, our mission to kick-in the door, rip up the furniture, empty all the drawers, turn over all the beds, throw all the papers all over, and then take the father and the 15 y/o boys off to have their butt hole examined and photographed. Ever wonder why we aren't winning the hearts and minds? Ever wonder why Iraqis resent any body who interpreters, joins the new Iraq Army or police? It's our homophobic love of looking at terrified naked men, with their penis shrunk into the foreskin so far it looks like a Vienna sausage of retreat. Oh, Aha ha ha exposed, terrified, beaten, threatened, your pecker looks so small and your balls have traveled back up into your abdomen..you must be a little girl, let's stack you like cord-wood into a pyramid on top of some other men turned in for bounties and given up under torture, and take some pictures of everyones butts until some new family names are revealed...so their houses can be violated...under this grand new Democracy, land of the free. That must be some constitution they wrote themselves where there is no sanctity, safety, or privacy in your own home. What a gift of civil rights, and protection under the law for guaranteed protection against unlawful search and csure. Maybe they aren't throwing flowers in our path because the have stuck them all up their butts so the interrogators will have something to look at while gathering intelligence.

[mike_c]

9. bingo-- if congress EVER intends to withdraw from Iraq, why are they still...

...appropriating the money funding infrastructure for a permanent occupation?

[libodem]

10. So they will never

run out of buttholes to look at.

[tom_paine]

12. They are NEVER leaving Iraq, the Buhsies have tied our hands. Do the math.

The Bushies have just committed (I'm sure) at least $1,000,000,000 if not more (Fortress Amerikan Embassy cost $592,000,000 alone and that was using SLAVE LABOR)

We can now neevr leave Iraq because that would be pissing away one or two BILLION in new construction.

THINk how heavily all the stolen loot has so lined Royal and Loyal Bushie pockets. They, I believe, practice Saudi Arabian levels of corrputiona nd theft (50% gets diverted to various places, Cayman Islands bank accounts etc., to the degree that the quality and timeliness of the project is delay...in Old America it was more like a 10% skim, and the projects did not get so much looted that they were delayed or shoddily done.

That's my overall view of that, and it leads to the overall view that we have created housing for 100,000 troops in Iraq and we are going to use it. :grr: