My Plan for Iraq - By BARACK OBAMA (NYT Op-Ed) - "Ending the war is essential"

[kpete]

My Plan for Iraq

By BARACK OBAMA
Published: July 14, 2008


CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

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But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

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Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

read the rest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[caledesi]

1. Txs.Fired up. Ready to go! NT

[crikkett]

2. Is it really withdrawing when a residual force is left behind? From his op-ed:

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

How large will the residual force be? How many American bases will be kept open for Israeli planes to use?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3606860
Israeli planes landing in iraq (on DU)

[blonndee]

3. Kick

[intheflow]

4. Kick.

Obama is an amazing voice of reason in a country gone mad.