Rebutting Bush, Edwards: "No Timeline, No Funding, No Excuses"

Posted by Howie Klein at 5:04 AM on September 14, 2007.

This post, written by Howie Klein, originally appeared on Down With Tyranny!

If you didn't listen to Bush's lame plan to keep the war going for a decade, here's the full text. Perhaps someone can name the 36 countries fighting along side us in Iraq. The response from Democrats was... muted and underplayed. We owe John Edwards for buying a couple minutes on MSNBC to give an Outside-the-Beltway response where he said, among other things

No timeline, no funding. No excuses. It is time to end this war.

The President's speech tonight offers a war without end. It is a PR stunt to buy more time for a stay the course strategy in Iraq that simply hasn't worked. There's a reason two-thirds of Americans want a troop decrease in Iraq: our brave troops have done everything that's been asked of them, but they cannot solve Iraq's political problems. Now they are hostage to the failure of our civilian leadership to present a thoughtful plan to bring them home.

Regrettably, the President did not seize the opportunity tonight to offer the American people a candid assessment of the challenges that we continue to face in Iraq, or offer a change in course to his failing strategy. Instead, he portrayed an unavoidable reduction in U.S. troops to pre-surge levels as a marker of progress. Redeploying over the next year five of the twenty combat brigades currently deployed in Iraq will merely bring our total number of troops back to the same level that existed before the President announced his escalation in January of this year. As was discussed during General Petraeus's testimony this week, troop levels in Iraq must decrease by this amount regardless, in order to avoid extending Army deployments beyond 15 months and straining our military even further than it already is.

What the President told the American people tonight is that one year from now, there will be the same number of troops in Iraq as there were one year ago. That is simply too little too late, and unacceptable to this Congress and the American people who have made clear their strong desire to bring our brave troops home.

The Commander-in-Chief has the authority to issue the order to greatly accelerate the redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq, and to bring so many more of our troops home so much faster. They have done everything we have asked of them and more, but are now stuck in the middle of a civil war. I continue to implore the President to change course, bring our troops home faster, and end this war responsibly as soon as possible.

Obama sounded OK too:

It is long past time to end a war that never should have started. President Bush was wrong when he took us to war, he was wrong when he escalated this war in January, and he is wrong to stay the course now. I opposed this war from the beginning, I introduced legislation in January that would have already started to bring our troops home, and I will continue to lead the fight in the Senate for a fixed timeline with a deadline for the removal of all of our combat troops. The American people are not going to be fooled by the same false promises of success that got us into Iraq. Iraq's leaders are not making the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge, but the President wants us to keep giving him a blank check. We must not continue the enormous sacrifice of our troops, our military readiness, our treasury, and our standing in the world just to keep the violence at the same unacceptable levels it was at in 2005 and 2006. That is why I have proposed an immediate and sustained removal of 1 to 2 combat brigades each month to conclude by the end of next year. We have to come together-- not as Republicans and Democrats-- but as Americans to turn the page in Iraq so that we can recapture our unity of purpose at home and our leadership around the world.

Tonight President Bush announced his plan to keep at least 130,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, demonstrating that he is trying to run out the clock on his failed strategy and leave the hard decisions to the next president.

For months the American people, a bipartisan majority of Congress and countless military experts have called for a new way forward in Iraq, but the President has offered only a commitment to endless war that will continue to take American lives, deplete our treasury, and divert our focus from fighting an effective war on terrorism against Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives.

After almost five years, tonight was just more of the same. It's not progress nor is it the strategy for success our troops deserve. And as long as President Bush keeps them in harm's way without clear purpose or achievable goals, Democrats will keep fighting to responsibly end this war.

Tonight, President Bush outlined a status quo strategy that leaves at least 130,000 American soldiers in harm's way as part of a 10-year occupation of Iraq.

The American people reject the President's call for an 'enduring relationship' with Iraq that is based on leaving our troops in the middle of a deadly civil war for at least 10 years. The President failed to answer how maintaining 130,000 soldiers in Iraq would strengthen our military, make us safer, or how he would pay for its additional $700 billion cost.

In the fifth year of war, after more than 3,700 brave Americans have lost their lives, it is unconscionable to ask additional sacrifices of our military while Iraqi politicians refuse to make the political progress necessary to end sectarian violence. The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment and the President's plan for a 10-year war in Iraq.

I just don't think that waiting another six months to reassess the situation is going to move us forward. The whole premise of the surge, as the president advocated it in January, was to buy time for political reforms, and that didn't happen. To continue with the same strategy that failed to produce the results that the president and everyone hoped for just doesn't make sense."

Tagged as: bush, iraq war, pelosi, reid, edwards, obama. clinton

Howie Klein is the creator of the blog Down With Tyranny!