Next president faces limited options in Iraq

[struggle4progress]

Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Monday, April 7, 2008

... "It's a hell of a mess," retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. "The Iraqi government is dysfunctional, the Iraqi security forces are inadequate, ill-equipped, and we've got very little time. By the way, I'm not recommending we come out of Iraq in a year or three. That's what's going to happen. This thing is over." ...

"People have got to look at starting the war and ending the war as separate problems," said Conrad Crane, director the U.S. Army Military History Institute. "The fact that the war should not have been launched is a separate question from how you pull out." ...

"Let's be very clear," former Army War College commandant Robert Scales Jr. testified. "Regardless of strategy or who's in office, we're going to get out of Iraq, just driven by the conditions of the military." ...

"It is clear we do not have votes in the U.S. Congress" to hold up funding, said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "That's part of what the Senate races are about. The American people are going to speak on this in November. There's no other way to put it. We don't have 60 votes, which is what it takes to do it. ...We will have debates to define the choices to the American people, but we have to be realistic about where the votes are." ...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/07/MN4T1018EG.DTL

[babylonsister]

1. Stay or go? Go works. Slowly. Leave we must. nt

[Sherman A1]

2. That sums it up rather well.

With my preference being GO and GO FASTER....