Rep. Barbara Lee
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03.07.2007
Fully Fund the Safe Withdrawal of our Troops from Iraq (9 comments )
The time has come for Congress to act to bring an end to the Bush administration's failed policy in Iraq, and I believe that the best way to do that is for Congress to protect our troops and fully fund their safe withdrawal from Iraq over a clear timeline.
I have been working with a number of colleagues in the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Out of Iraq Caucus and I wanted to share with you a letter that we sent to the Democratic Caucus, asking for their support for a plan to fully fund the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq.
March 6, 2007
Fully fund the safe withdrawal of our troops from Iraq
Dear Colleague,
We write to share our thoughts with you about Congressional action regarding the ongoing occupation of Iraq and to make the case for fully funding the safe withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq over a clear timeline.
By framing their discussion of the war in terms of winning and losing, the Bush administration seeks to portray critics of their policies as opposed to victory, or supportive of defeat.
The fact is that you cannot "win" an occupation, just as there is no way for the United States to "win" an Iraqi civil war.
The Bush administration understands this, just as they understand that there are no pretty or clean options for bringing a responsible end to our policy there. They are content to mouth the words of victory while they try to run out the clock, playing a cynical game of political "chicken," where whoever acts to bring a responsible end to their failed policy will be accused of having lost Iraq.
There is no question that moving to stop this folly carries a political risk - the accusation that Democrats gave up on the Vietnam War, despite all evidence that it was an unwinnable conflict, hurt the party's credibility on national security issues for a generation.
But we must consider the very real cost of not acting. We are spending $8 billion a month occupying Iraq, with an average of 67 U.S. troops being killed and 500 being wounded. The cost to our security of having our military bogged down in Iraq indefinitely is unsustainable, and is not only sapping vital funds from efforts to fight global terrorism, but is strengthening jihadist recruitment efforts internationally. The longer we allow the administration to delay meaningful movement, and the longer we fail to extract ourselves from this quagmire, the more dangerous this failed foreign policy becomes to America and the rest of the world. .....(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-barbara-lee/fully-fund-the-safe-withd_b_42860.html
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