I saw that Kerry is planning on pulling the troops

out of Iraq slowly, but surely after he is elected.

His plan apparently is to involve some of our long time allies who have yet to provide any assistance in Iraq.

I'd assume he was speaking of France and Germany. What are the real reasons these countries have not helped us up to this point?

-Oil for food
-They don't like Bush
-Thought the war was unnecessary
Is this plan realistic or am I missing something?

The allies are not going to be too thrilled about supporting us in the quagmire we've created for ourselves. If he can get a decent NATO contingent and convince an Arab force of maybe Syrians and Egyptians to deal with some of the security, maybe we'd have something. But wheter any of that would help Iraqis is anyone's guess.

I support him and I am worried that many others will look at his plan as unrealistic.

Unless you kill them indiscriminately or establish a brutal strongman puppet, and neither of those have worked very well in the past.

I do not really know about France, but in Germany's case you have to see that the German Army is made up from conscripts equipped for a tank battle in central Europe.
Sending draftees into lethal danger with zero public support for the mission is nothing any German Government would do. Also the professional German soldiers are almost completely deployed.

Financial Aid is another matter entirely - I guess under the right conditions more such backing would be possible; just bear in might that there never will be enough backing.

That is what I think as well.

We don't have the support of Germany or France because of *. Once new leadership, they will be willing to help if they are included in the rebuilding efforts (their businesses allowed to bid on the efforts) also, Iraq has 2nd largest oil reserve. They are interested.

France distrusted * from the beginning when he named FU as his Veep.
France has been investigating FU since he was CEO of Haliburton re the illegal bribes in Nigeria and other miscellaneous crimes.

IMHO

declaring it impossible for Kerry to accomplish this.

I believe him, not them.

The Bush administration has done everything it can to slow down the democratic process in Iraq. They've discarded city and ward elections results, cancelled elections, and prevented anyone from trying to take any responsibility who isn't immediately subordinate to them. A number of cities held local elections in 2002, and the Bush administration cast out the results, placing their own toadies in office instead.

Ayatollah al Sistani said that he expected us to have elections by June, and then pull all of our troops out. Bush has no intention of doing so, having started the construction of 18 new permanent US military bases in Iraq. Kerry isn't appearing to commit to doing except over the course of a few years, but at least he's moving in the right direction. If he wises up to communicating and negotiating with the ACTUAL power brokers in Iraq, rather than the fake ones like Chalabi, he stands a better chance of getting the US's ass out of the fire.

What it all comes down to is accepting the fact that the US will NOT end up 'owning' Iraq successfully, either directly or through proxies. There WILL end up being people in office in Iraq whom the US finds unacceptable. It's unavoidable, given the last 20 years of history between Iraq and the US.

I don't think the Bush administration can accept this fact. This is why none of their initiatives are working, or will ever work. To all the other parties both in Iraq and at the UN, they sound like bad car salesman trying to sell a lemon for too much money. They aren't fooling anyone any more.

If the Kerry administration can fully accept the notion that Iraq cannot be successfully transformed into a US puppet, they will find many avenues open that are current closed to the Bush administration.

and every day is getting worse. I wouldn't be surprised if Bush didn't pull the troops out the same way we left Vietnam.