The New Road

New thoughts on the Iraq strategy

It's clear that both Democrats and Republicans want to get out of Iraq in 2006. The only difference is that Republicans want to be able to claim victory, while Democrats just want us out.

Here is one idea for achieving 'victory', whatever that is. A recent Iraqi poll found that 80% of Iraqis want us out of Iraq (and that 55% thought they were better off with Saddam, and 45% thought it was ok to kill Americans). Every time Democrats bring up the 80% number administration officials and Republicans throw up a smoke screen and run away.

One would believe from that they think it's a bad number. I think quite the contrary. I think they love that number, they just don't want people to know about it today. They want people to hear about it three weeks after the election when the Parliment holds a referendum on whether they should tell us to get out. Hopefully, the plan is that they will do that, tell us to get out, and we will start a withdrawl at that point. I certainly hope that's the case.

Frankly, I don't care whether they call it a 'victory' or not. It was a failure from the beginning and no speech or showcase political action is going to prove otherwise. There is a lot of evidence of failure, most recently notable are these poll numbers. 55% think they were better off under Saddam. That's amazing. I love when Hannity rants on about "Where we better off with Saddam?" Clearly, the people on the ground say yes. What trailer trash in Idaho think about Saddam, when they think Canada is in Europe, is not even relevant.

If it matters, on the question of whether we are better off with or without Saddam. I reject the premise of the question. I will answer this question; Given the outcome of the war, should we have continued the policy of containment, or followed the Bush war (and post-war) game plan? My answer is that we should have continued the policy of containment.

Recently the Germans said that their intelligence agency was telling the CIA that Saddam had no weapons. Just in the past days the French said exactly the same thing. And the British told us that the Bush administration was cooking the books on Iraq pre-war intelligence. Clearly, if Bush were impartial and had actually weighed the evidence at hand, we would not have gone to war. Obviously that was not done. Either Bush wanted to go to war. Or his bubble filtered all the intelligence. Or, he was just not involved in the decision.