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100 years vs 100 days
He’s got that Reagan look in his eyes, circa 87′…
Maliki Disagrees With Petraeus’s ‘Pause,’ Says ‘U.S. Troops Should Be Pulled Out’
Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Iraq, told Congress this week that he is recommending to President Bush that the United States “pause†the draw down of troops in Iraq this July for at least 45 days in order to assess the security situation there.
Bush has now accepted Petraeus’s recommendation, “leaving open the possibility that about 140,000 U.S. servicemen and women will still be in the war zone when the next president takes office.â€
But there is one important decision-maker that Petraeus and Bush don’t seem to be listening to: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The AP reports that Maliki told Bush yesterday that he “disagrees†with Petraeus’s recommendation “citing the growing capabilities of Iraq’s own security forcesâ€
-I’m old. Take me home. I’m lost. I’m cold. I’m afraid. Who are you? I don’t know any “al-Maliki.” Where are my jelly beans?
Update: DBK finds the clincher…
3 Responses to “100 years vs 100 days”
It’s nice that MoveOn made a neat package of this, but we’ve been watching these promises to turn this shitpile into a perfumed garden for five years and it hasn’t happened yet.
Five years: IIRC, that’s longer than the U.S. participation in W.W. II. MoveOn aside, there is nothing… nothing… that could persuade me that the continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, an illegitimate involvement in the first place, is anything more than a political gesture by the Bushists. It’s time for America to get out… while there’s still an America to get out.
I heard an interview on a local talk radio show last week with a guy from the American Friends Service Committee who works as a liaison between US Congresspeople and Iraqi Parliament members. He sets up meetings in Jordan, Baghdad, via satellite, etc so that the two sides can actually talk to one another about the occupation. He said that the most common response from both sides is surprise that the other is so against the occupation, and yet it won’t stop. He repeatedly stressed that, even all this time after the Iraqis voted in the only election they have had so far, the only elected body of the Iraqi government has no voice in the American media. He noted that the only voice heard in the US is from the appointed executive branch, not from the elected representatives of the Iraqis who have passed multiple resolutions demanding the departure of all US troops. Similarly, it seems that the US Congress has no voice in the Iraqi media, only the executive branch. So both legislative bodies are essentially cut off from one another, operating on information gained by the executive branch propaganda of the other nation. At least someone is trying to break through the fog.