If the US cannot achieve it's military objective with 145,000 troops, what
diference will an extra 20,000 more troops make in the Fight for Iraq?..The
fact of the matter is, and military general / strategist will tell you, that
you do not fight an enemy on their territory, on their term,... and above all
let the enemy determined when and how the battle will take place. you will
never win.
Indeed, that is why it was essential to have a full coalition of Nations
/international force if Saddam had to be removed...If only a true coalition was
formed, the US would have long withdrawed to say Kuwaite..and have the UN
deploy, the saudis, the pakistani's, and other arab forces to contain the now
out of control situation in Iraq!!! that is called having the smarts!!
MK
McCain says more troops needed in Iraq
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 14 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Without additional troops to ensure victory in Iraq, the U.S.
could find itself more vulnerable to terrorist attacks at home, Sen. John
McCain (news, bio, voting record) said Sunday.
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Taking the opposite tack, newly empowered Democrats pressed their case for a
phased withdrawal of American forces. They hoped a blue-ribbon advisory panel
would propose a way ahead for Iraq, while making clear the U.S. military
mission shouldn't last indefinitely.
McCain, a front-running GOP presidential hopeful for 2008, said the U.S. must
send an overwhelming number of troops to stabilize Iraq or face more attacks
in the region and possibly on American soil.
"I believe the consequences of failure are catastrophic," said McCain,
R-Ariz. "It will spread to the region. You will see Iran more emboldened.
Eventually, you could see Iran pose a greater threat to the state of Israel."
With about 141,000 U.S. troops in Iraq more than 3 1/2 years into the war,
the American military has strained to provide enough forces while allowing for
adequate rest and retraining between deployments.
But McCain, who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war after his Navy plane
was shot down in 1967, recalled the Vietnam War's lessons. "We left Vietnam. It
was over. We just had to heal the wounds of war," he said. "We leave this
place, chaos in the region, and they'll follow us home. So there's a great deal
more at stake here in this conflict, in my view, a lot more."
McCain said he based his judgment partly on the writings of Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. air raid, and
of Osama bin Laden.
"The consequences of failure are so severe that I will exhaust every
possibility to try to fix this situation. Because it's not the end when
American troops leave. The battleground shifts, and we'll be fighting them
again," McCain said. "You read Zarqawi, and you read bin Laden. ... It's not
just Iraq that they're interested in. It's the region, and then us."
Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), the incoming chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he hoped a special commission
considering options for the way ahead in Iraq would assert that U.S. troop
commitments are not open-ended; propose a clear political road map for Iraq;
and recommend engaging Iraq's neighbors in a political solution.
"We are past the point of adding more troops. We are past the point of vague
policy prescriptions. It is not an answer just to stay. Nor is it an answer
though it may become a necessity just to go with no concern for what
follows," Biden, D-Del., wrote in Sunday's Washington Post.
"The fundamental question we must answer is whether, as we begin to leave
Iraq, there are still concrete steps we can take to avoid leaving chaos
behind," said Biden, who plans to run for president in 2008.
Democrats poised to take control of the House and Senate are pressing for a
substantial reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq and a timetable for their
withdrawal, as a way of forcing the Iraq government to rely more on itself.
"We must tell the Iraqis that we would begin, starting in four to six months,
a phased reduction of our troops," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting
record), D-Mich., the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"Because if you don't do that, they're going to continue to have the false
assumption that we are there in some kind of an open-ended way. And it is that
assumption on their part that takes them off the hook."
Incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., agreed. "As a practical
matter, there are no troops to increase with," he said. "Our objective was to
remove Saddam Hussein and create an environment in which a democracy could be
established. That has been done."
But Hoyer said Democrats would continue funding the existing troop levels,
for the time being.
"That's not an option, of not supporting our troops in the field and making
sure they're as safe as we can make them," he said. "Very frankly, their lack
of numbers exposes them on a daily basis to danger and death, unfortunately.
But clearly, we're going to have discussions going forward as to how we change
this policy and change it in the short term, not the long term."
Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, told the
Senate Armed Services Committee last week he believes troop levels should
remain steady for now. He said it was possible to add 20,000 troops for a short
time, but it would be unrealistic to raise troop levels as proposed by McCain
and Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), R-S.C.
Abizaid said the American military in Iraq is stretched too thin already, and
sending over a bigger, more permanent presence would undercut efforts to force
Iraqis to take on more responsibility. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said he
thinks U.S. generals have been put "in a a very, very difficult position."
"What I don't have confidence in is the policy. And General Abizaid is giving
us a diagnosis that is based on the current policy. But that policy has to
change, and it can change," said Kerry, who is considering a White House bid in
2008. Kerry spoke on "Fox News Sunday," while McCain and Hoyer appeared on
ABC's "This Week." Levin spoke on CNN's "Late Edition." Graham appeared on
"Face the Nation" on CBS
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