Top Democratic candidates won't vow full Iraq pullout by 2013

[frogman68]

HANOVER, New Hampshire (AP) -- The leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013.
The candidates have vied with increasing intensity for the support of anti-war voters.





"I think it's hard to project four years from now," said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation's first primary state.
"It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
"I cannot make that commitment," said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
Sensing an opening, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson provided the assurances the others would not.
"I'll get the job done," said Dodd, while Richardson said he would make sure the troops were home by the end of his first year in office.

read more

Finally the Dems are waking up. The responsible Politicians (doesnt matter which party) know that we cant just pack up and leave. The power vacum that would be left behind would be devastating to us in years to come (ie more terrorists). The little thing I like to throw out there that no Dem (and suprisingly no Republican either) has mentioned Bosnia, Bill Clinton said in Oct 95 that we are going in for one year and one year only now 12 years later were still there. I am waiting to see that brought up

[M.Opaliski]

Caution: Run On Sentence

It's not about waking up, and it's not about war, it's a simple reality and they know that they cannot make the "promise" to pull out because as much as those that want to hear it want to hear it, and as much as they might want to say it because it would gain a lot of support from the base for whoever does, there is no certainty in it and that makes it too much of a risk.

[frogman68]

Mo exactly but that is what the Dems ran on last year and were trying to this time I think the American public is finally realizing this as well

[rstonecousley]

The little thing I like to throw out there that no Dem (and suprisingly no Republican either) has mentioned Bosnia, Bill Clinton said in Oct 95 that we are going in for one year and one year only now 12 years later were still there. I am waiting to see that brought up

It's still early so my brain's still a little sleepy.....seems to me we pulled most of our troops out of Bosnia several years ago. And our troops were part of a multi-national coalition with a UN mandate. And there was a consistent and continued improvement in the security situation in Sarajevo. And the people WANTED us there and weren't trying to kill our boys.

I'll take a longer-than-expected deployment - whether it's in Baghdad or Bosnia - when we're doing the right thing and there for the right reasons. So if anyone brings Bosnia up, I hope it's to take some lessons from our success there.

From the Washington Post:

Sending 20,000 American troops to Bosnia as part of a NATO-led peacekeeping contingent to enforce Dayton took real political courage. There were widespread predictions that it would fail, and there was opposition from most of Congress and the foreign policy elite. In a poll at the time, Clinton's decision was supported by only 36 percent of the American public, who expected heavy U.S. casualties. As it turned out, that expectation was misplaced; in the 10 years since Dayton, no -- repeat, no -- American or NATO military personnel have been killed by hostile action in Bosnia. It is a mark of the respect in which NATO -- that is, the United States -- is held.

This was Clinton's most important action in regard to Europe -- an action opposed, incidentally, by most of his political advisers. It was a classic commander-in-chief decision, made alone, without congressional support and with only reluctant backing from the Pentagon. But it worked: Without those 20,000 troops, Bosnia would not have survived, 2 million refugees would still be wandering the face of Western Europe, a criminal state would be in power in Bosnia itself -- and we would probably have had to pursue Operation Enduring Freedom not only in Afghanistan but also in the deep ravines and dangerous hills of central Bosnia, where a shadowy organization we now know as al Qaeda was putting down roots that were removed by NATO after Dayton.

Was Bosnia worth it? As we approach the 10th anniversary of Dayton, there should no longer be any debate. Had we not intervened -- belatedly but decisively -- a disaster would have taken place with serious consequences for our national security and the war on terrorism. Dayton reasserted an American leadership role in Europe after a period of drift and confusion. But the job is not yet finished, and it is encouraging to see President Bush and the new team at State recommit the nation, as they did last week at Srebrenica.

[frogman68]

It's still early so my brain's still a little sleepy.....seems to me we pulled most of our troops out of Bosnia several years ago. And our troops were part of a multi-national coalition with a UN mandate. And there was a consistent and continued improvement in the security situation in Sarajevo. And the people WANTED us there and weren't trying to kill our boys.

I'll take a longer-than-expected deployment - whether it's in Baghdad or Bosnia - when we're doing the right thing and there for the right reasons. So if anyone brings Bosnia up, I hope it's to take some lessons from our success there.

From the Washington Post:

Sending 20,000 American troops to Bosnia as part of a NATO-led peacekeeping contingent to enforce Dayton took real political courage. There were widespread predictions that it would fail, and there was opposition from most of Congress and the foreign policy elite. In a poll at the time, Clinton's decision was supported by only 36 percent of the American public, who expected heavy U.S. casualties. As it turned out, that expectation was misplaced; in the 10 years since Dayton, no -- repeat, no -- American or NATO military personnel have been killed by hostile action in Bosnia. It is a mark of the respect in which NATO -- that is, the United States -- is held.

This was Clinton's most important action in regard to Europe -- an action opposed, incidentally, by most of his political advisers. It was a classic commander-in-chief decision, made alone, without congressional support and with only reluctant backing from the Pentagon. But it worked: Without those 20,000 troops, Bosnia would not have survived, 2 million refugees would still be wandering the face of Western Europe, a criminal state would be in power in Bosnia itself -- and we would probably have had to pursue Operation Enduring Freedom not only in Afghanistan but also in the deep ravines and dangerous hills of central Bosnia, where a shadowy organization we now know as al Qaeda was putting down roots that were removed by NATO after Dayton.

Was Bosnia worth it? As we approach the 10th anniversary of Dayton, there should no longer be any debate. Had we not intervened -- belatedly but decisively -- a disaster would have taken place with serious consequences for our national security and the war on terrorism. Dayton reasserted an American leadership role in Europe after a period of drift and confusion. But the job is not yet finished, and it is encouraging to see President Bush and the new team at State recommit the nation, as they did last week at Srebrenica.

Rs I dont want to rain on your parade but that article is incorrect in stating no US soldiers died as a result of hostile action. I remember vividly a Sfc that found a IED and was attempting to disarm it when it went off, do you consider a IED a hostile action I do. The Road out of Saravejo (sp??) was once know as Sniper Alley there was a Lt killed by sniper fire right after we got there are they saying that is not hostile action ? The reason it seems to be going so well there is that we are on bases and not really venturing outside the bases . I will look to see if I still have some pictures, I took one was a sign FU Americans go home. The papers dont always have the facts

[M.Opaliski]

Mo exactly but that is what the Dems ran on last year and were trying to this time ...

The Democrats that are running for POTUS are "a different animal" Democrats than those who ran for Congress, even if they are the same people. I would love to nail them down with something like this but c'mon, any thinking person can see that you just can't make that kind of promise to the nation when there is no clear evidence that you can deliver it. What's more, in making the promise you gain support from "the left", for the Primary, then you have to do a 180 for the General where you will have trouble picking up votes because of the promise, and when you move away from the promise to gain support elsewhere you lose the support you had. It's a tight rope to walk ...

[frogman68]

The Democrats that are running for POTUS are "a different animal" Democrats than those who ran for Congress, even if they are the same people. I would love to nail them down with something like this but c'mon, any thinking person can see that you just can't make that kind of promise to the nation when there is no clear evidence that you can deliver it. What's more, in making the promise you gain support from "the left", for the Primary, then you have to do a 180 for the General where you will have trouble picking up votes because of the promise, and when you move away from the promise to gain support elsewhere you lose the support you had. It's a tight rope to walk ...

If I give you a couple of my Extra years will you run for POTUS?? LOL

[rstonecousley]

Rs I dont want to rain on your parade but that article is incorrect in stating no US soldiers died as a result of hostile action. I remember vividly a Sfc that found a IED and was attempting to disarm it when it went off, do you consider a IED a hostile action I do. The Road out of Saravejo (sp??) was once know as Sniper Alley there was a Lt killed by sniper fire right after we got there are they saying that is not hostile action ? The reason it seems to be going so well there is that we are on bases and not really venturing outside the bases . I will look to see if I still have some pictures, I took one was a sign FU Americans go home. The papers dont always have the facts

Still, an extremely successful undertaking overall as compared to the Iraq clusterfuck.......

[frogman68]

Still, an extremely successful undertaking overall as compared to the Iraq clusterfuck.......

Rs its apple and oranges.

Bosnia was a peackeeping mission not a war, I use this example only to show that the Dems do know that you dont build a country a goverment in a few years it takes decades.

[Curly]

As long as they can pull out during Bush's term it's fine and good because Bush will take the failure with him. When/if the dems get the next election, they don't want the failure under their term. Personally, I don't think it's a failure yet. A democracy isn't going to happen within 10 years let alone 4 or 5.

[cowboygilbert]

US House Democrats favor timetable for Iraq troops
Richard Cowan
Reuters North American News Service
May 06, 2008 15:21 EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders in the House have agreed on a plan to fund the Iraq war into next year but included a provision to withdraw combat troops by the end of 2009, lawmakers said Tuesday.
<br/>

The plan for supporting the approximately $170 billion request from President Bush to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also would expand education benefits for war veterans and give more help to the long-term U.S. unemployed.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who is an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, said the legislation would give Bush all the new money he requested for combat "so that whoever becomes president will have a few months to get his or her act together before they submit their plans to extricate us from Iraq."
A new president will be sworn in next January. Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have promised to start withdrawing troops if they are elected. Sen. John McCain, who will likely be the Republican nominee, has talked about a possibly long U.S. combat presence in Iraq.
The measure could face problems in the Senate and is expected to be resisted by Bush. He rejects any Iraq withdrawal timetable and opposes the Democrats' plan for expanding veterans' education benefits and extending U.S. jobless benefits for up to six months.
Obey acknowledged that while Democrats can pass troop withdrawal timetables through the House, there was not enough support in Congress overall to win passage.
He said when the legislation reaches the House floor, lawmakers will have a chance to vote on a plan to begin immediate combat troop withdrawals from Iraq with the goal of completing the pullout by the end of 2009.
The full House could vote Thursday on the plan, which would provide war funds for the remainder of this fiscal year and the next one, which starts on Oct. 1.
One year ago, Bush vetoed war-funding legislation that contained timetables for withdrawing troops, saying that decision must be left to military commanders.
Other provisions in the bill also are opposed by the White House, including imposing standards for training and rotating combat troops, who in the past have had deployments in Iraq extended.

INPUT INTO THE BILL
The bill also would outlaw torture of detainees, as outlined by the Army field manual.
Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, the senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, said he will try to obstruct House debate on the bill this week, complaining his party did not have input into the bill.
A spokeswoman said Lewis would have tried to attach a controversial electronic-surveillance bill to the war-funding measure.
Other Republicans wanted to pursue a mix of unrelated amendments, from suspending federal gasoline taxes to prohibiting government funds from being used to pay for officials' trips to the summer Olympics in Beijing.
Obey responded: "The Pentagon is saying you've got to get this through fast. Meanwhile they (House Republicans) want an operation that will slow us down for weeks and weeks."
The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to meet on Thursday to consider its version of the war-funding bill.
If Congress approves the combat funds, as expected, it will have given Bush more than $800 billion since 2001 for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of that money has gone to Iraq, where about 159,000 troops are now fighting.
Obey said the legislation also would require Iraq's government to take on more of the burden of reconstruction and training of its security forces.
For every dollar U.S. taxpayers spend, Iraq would have to spend one dollar, he said. This would apply to projects costing more than $750,000.
The Bush administration has told Congress that it needs additional money for the wars by the end of this month or it will have difficulty paying soldiers after June 15.
But Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, who chairs a panel overseeing defense spending, accused the administration of "scare" tactics, saying, "We know the troops are going to get paid." (Editing by Philip Barbara)

Source: Reuters North American News Service

Additional links from Reuters North American News Service

Congress must act to put sufficient political pressure on Bush to admit his mistakes, revise his Iraq war strategy that has become mired in mission creep for years, define clear aims and objectives ,a timetable for U.S. military transfer of power to a well-trained national Iraq army on providing stability, cessation of hostilities with rogue militias, greater cooperation among the major Iraqi parties(Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds) in a tri-partite federal republic, and long-term implementation procedures for economic reconstruction.A lame-duck Bush should support the U.S. Congress and help pave the way for a more successful ,imaginative diplomacy of the next President.

[Roogle]

Letting them recreate their own government could be more important that forcing them to make a "westernized" type of government.

[Curly]

Letting them recreate their own government could be more important that forcing them to make a "westernized" type of government.

I agree. They don't want to be westernized. Let them be resonsible for their own destination and soon they'll be no better or worse before Saddam's rule was terminated. That whole side of the world thrives on violence. Always has, always will.

keywood: Islamic

[Roogle]

If they really wanted "our" type of government. They would be in open arms. But pride does not want them to conform to a system they really don't understand. When people commit crimes in their land. They get killed. They may not understand the democratic process.

[cowboygilbert]

From Welfare Liberalism to Vigilante Socialism
Democracy in America Is a Series of Narrow Escapes, and We May Be Running Out of Luck

by Bill Moyers
The following is an excerpt from Bill Moyers’ new book, “Moyers on Democracy“.
Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is “better” than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, “The system works.”
Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country — a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as “believing the dogma of ‘democracy’ on a superficial public level but not believing it privately.” We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control. There is considerable vigor at local levels, but it has not been translated into new vistas of social possibility or the political will to address our most intractable challenges. Hope no longer seems the operative dynamic of America, and without hope we lose the talent and drive to cooperate in the shaping of our destiny.
The earth we share as our common gift, to be passed on in good condition to our children’s children, is being despoiled. Private wealth is growing as public needs increase apace. Our Constitution is perilously close to being consigned to the valley of the shadow of death, betrayed by a powerful cabal of secrecy-obsessed authoritarians. Terms like “liberty” and “individual freedom” invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to “promote the general welfare” have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the welfare of the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it. It isn’t necessary to be a Jeremiah crying aloud to a sinful Jerusalem that the Lord is about to afflict them for their sins of idolatry, or Cassandra, making a nuisance of herself as she wanders around King Priam’s palace grounds wailing “The Greeks are coming.” Or Socrates, the gadfly, stinging the rump of power with jabs of truth. Or even Paul Revere, if horses were still in fashion. You need only be a reporter with your eyes open to see what’s happening to our democracy. I have been lucky enough to spend my adult life as a journalist, acquiring a priceless education in the ways of the world, actually getting paid to practice one of my craft’s essential imperatives: connect the dots.
The conclusion that we are in trouble is unavoidable. I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments — genuine savings — in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, and employees out of work, out of luck, and out of hope.
And then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of sixty-year-old banking and securities regulations designed during the Great Depression to prevent exactly that kind of human and economic damage. Who pushed for the removal of that firewall? An administration and Congress who are the political marionettes of the speculators, and who are well rewarded for their efforts with indispensable campaign contributions. Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the web of an electoral system that effectively limits competition to those who can afford to spend millions in their run for office. Like it or not, candidates know that the largesse on which their political futures depend will last only as long as their votes are satisfactory to the sleek “bundlers” who turn the spigots of cash on and off.
The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly “veneration for wealth” are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined. “Money rules Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us.” Those words were spoken by Populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease during the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains slightly more than 120 years after the Constitution was signed. They are true today, and that too, spells trouble.
Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among industrialized democracies, the relentless cheeseparing of federal funds devoted to public schools, to retraining for workers whose jobs have been exported, and to programs of food assistance and health care for poor children, all of which snatch away the ladder by which Americans with scant means but willing hands and hearts could work and save their way upward to middle-class independence. And I connect those numbers to our triumphant reactionaries’ campaigns against labor unions and higher minimum wages, and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of Atlas on a shrinking middle class awash in credit card debt as wage earners struggle to keep up with rising costs for health care, for college tuitions, for affordable housing — while huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized, rates on capital gains are slashed, and the rich get richer and with each increase in their wealth are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and those who carry out the laws.
Edward R. Murrow told his generation of journalists: “No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them.” Here is my bias: extremes of wealth and poverty cannot be reconciled with a genuinely democratic politics. When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the people as a whole, it mocks the very concept of government as proclaimed in the preamble to our Constitution; mocks Lincoln’s sacred belief in “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”; mocks the democratic notion of government as “a voluntary union for the common good” embodied in the great wave of reform that produced the Progressive Era and the two Roosevelts. In contrast, the philosophy popularized in the last quarter century that “freedom” simply means freedom to choose among competing brands of consumer goods, that taxes are an unfair theft from the pockets of the successful to reward the incompetent, and that the market will meet all human needs while government itself becomes the enabler of privilege — the philosophy of an earlier social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism dressed in new togs — is as subversive as Benedict Arnold’s betrayal of the Revolution he had once served. Again, Mary Lease: “The great evils which are cursing American society and undermining the foundations of the republic flow not from the legitimate operation of the great human government which our fathers gave us, but they come from tramping its plain provisions underfoot.”
Our democracy has prospered most when it was firmly anchored in the idea that “We the People” — not just a favored few — would identify and remedy common distempers and dilemmas and win the gamble our forebears undertook when they espoused the radical idea that people could govern themselves wisely. Whatever and whoever tries to supplant that with notions of a wholly privatized society of competitive consumers undermines a country that, as Gordon S. Wood puts it in his landmark book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, discovered its greatness “by creating a prosperous free society belonging to obscure people with their workaday concerns and their pecuniary pursuits of happiness” — a democracy that changed the lives of “hitherto neglected and despised masses of common laboring people.”The following is an excerpt from Bill Moyers’ new book, “Moyers on Democracy“.