John Nichols: A (True) Conservative Case for Exiting Iraq

[billr]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1023-25.htm

George Bush, who once criticized Ronald Reagan's approach to terrorism, is now making a desperate grab for the former president's coattails.

In August, Bush said that, because of Reagan's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Lebanon after the 1983 bombing of a Maine barracks in Beirut killed 241 Americans, " concluded that free societies lack the courage and character to defend themselves against a determined enemy."

But two months later, with his poll ratings dropping to levels Reagan never saw, and with public support for the Iraq occupation collapsing, Bush traveled to a the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, where he declared with a straight face that, "we are answering history's call with confidence and a comprehensive strategy."

(snip)

He did not, of course, announce a strategy for pulling anything akin to victory out of a quagmire that former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, a Republican stalwart, compares with the Vietnam imbroglio in an article penned for the forthcoming edition of Foreign Affairs magazine. Connecting Bush with another former president, Laird suggests that the current commander-in-chief is repeating the mistakes of Richard Nixon by keeping U.S. troops in a fight where there appears to be no obvious benchmark for defining victory and no plan for bringing U.S. troops home.

[Oversea Visitor]

1. What benchmark?

Bush unleash hell on the Iraqis people just to get Saddam.

The minute US leave there be a whole hoard of people going in documenting the hell created by US.

I mean to be the greatest president ever in the US he cant have that right tarnishing his name.

Dont matter how many American dies to protect his so call good name.
Dont matter how much taxpayer money spend.

bush is everything to him.

(B)uckle (U)p (S)hit (H)ere.