Kerry Sketches an Iraq Exit Plan

Kerry Sketches an Iraq Exit Plan
By Ronald Brownstein
Los Angeles Times

Tuesday 03 August 2004

He calls replacing most U.S. troops with foreign forces within a first term a 'reasonable' goal.
Grand Rapids, Mich. - Within a first term as president, Sen. John F. Kerry thinks he could attract enough international help in Iraq to make it a "reasonable" goal to replace most U.S. troops stationed there with foreign forces, he told The Times in an interview.

"I will engage in the creation of a very different equation, very rapidly," the Democratic presidential nominee said of troop deployment in Iraq.

The interview, conducted Sunday night during Kerry's bus tour through the Midwest, continued the aggressive challenge to President Bush's national security record that the Massachusetts senator and other Democrats offered at the party's national convention last week.

Kerry flatly asserted that he was more qualified to conduct international diplomacy than Bush. He argued that the president was so committed "to rushing to the job of going to war" that Bush failed to sufficiently question the intelligence he received on Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion.

Discussing the new terrorism threats to financial institutions, Kerry said the administration had failed to exhibit enough urgency about strengthening the nation's defenses.

Referring to Bush's frequent characterization of himself as a "war president," Kerry said Bush and his top officials "have not behaved like an administration at war in terms of their management of homeland security."

On domestic issues, Kerry said he would not scale back his plan to expand access to healthcare even if the federal budget deficit grew. And he was less definitive about maintaining his pledge to halve the federal deficit over a first term.

"That's a goal," Kerry said. "It's a goal we are going to try to achieve. But I have to see what the numbers are on Jan. 20 . I am not going to dig myself a hole based on some ideological … promise like the president did when he did his plan." ...cont'd

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/printer_080404Y.shtml

Then we'll be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Bring them home in three months. That's about how long an orderly withdrawal will take.

I can live with that.

They want the US out, they also don't want the UN or NATO in their country, and they absolutedly refuse to let anyone else in, particularly the Turks.

Allawi and Chalabi are NOT the Iraqi people.