Rumsfeld says U.S. does not have to wait until Iraq is peaceful

[BurtWorm]

before it begins to withdraw troops?! That's what a caption of a pic with Rummy and Allawi says at NYTimes.com. Could he really have said that? Doesn't that mean the US is NOT going to see the mission to completion, as Bush kept asserting yesterday? Or have they redefined "completion?"

[cthrumatrix]

1. that fits....PNAC wants civil war since the election would not be

representative of SHia, Suni, Kurds

[liveoaktx]

2. Oh, ya mean Bush is gonna cut and run?

[Jacobin]

6. That should be applauded my friend

The longer we stay, the worse it will get. I lived through Vietnam. This is the same fucking thing.

Longer we stay the more body bags. NOTHING else will be gained

[TexasSissy]

3. And he has such a solid record of being right....right?

Does anyone really listen to Rummy anymore? In his speech last week, not just once but several times he referred to Saddam Hussein (he was speaking about Osama bin Laden). It's getting embarassing for him.

[necso]

4. They know that the war is their weakest spot.

Even good soldiers are speaking out against it. So the admin and its allies will say anything and maybe even do something... before the election.

But where are the troops ultimately going, I wonder.

[Jacobin]

5. He's right. We bugged out of Nam in a hurry with guns blazing

at us in the background.

Now the sickening tide turns as democrats plead with Kerry NOT to leave poor Iraq in a mess, and stay to "fix" it.....god i hate this fucking invasion.

DON"T BE STUPID PEOPLE.

Iraq will not be occupied. It won't tolerate it.

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. They aren't going to withdraw anybody

They have permanent bases scattered all over Iraq. They might withdraw to the bases and the oil fields and pipelines but they aren't leaving Iraq, you can bet on it.

[BurtWorm]

8. That I'm sure of.

But I suspect they're trying to sucker voters into thinking Iraq won't be a problem if Bush is elected, and young voters who are concerned about the draft into thinking they don't have to rush to the polls to end the war administration.

[Cat Atomic]

9. It's hard to tell which statements are truthful in an election year,

and it's always hard to tell with the Bush administration, but...

I think our government intends to keep US troops in Iraq permanently. I'm sure they'd love to keep them on base, and pass off all the responsibility to the local puppet regime, of course.

But they've got the two things they wanted:

1) control of Iraq's oil reserves
2) permanent US bases in Iraq

Those troops aren't going anywhere.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Good. It's not peaceful now. We can pull out.

I doubt that he meant it that way, but one could hope.

The "war" is lost. Time to go.