We lost the war in Iraq! Let's bring the troops home!

In a nutshell that's the ugly truth about Iraq that no one wants to talk about. Strangely enough, Kerry is the only candidate that said the same thing about another mistake that shall remain nameless.

Kerry should have the courage to tell the American people the truth about Iraq: we lost the war, let's bring the troops home!

Kerry can say that he doesn't want to be the President that asks people to die for a mistake.

It should be done by March.

Because that's exactly what happened.

We put a puppet regime in charge, like the Nazis did in Vichy France. There was never a peace!

Unfortuantely, we DID manage to anhilate(sp?) their country. We did manage to invade and occupy. Many will say that we did win the war. I see your point. The war is still ongoing - it's just between ordinary citizens and our soldiers now.

So, I guess that isn't a good way of putting it after all.

Our war of conquest and occupation in order to pursue an imperialist dream, that was endorsed by the neocons of PNAC and the neolibs of PPI, is lost for good. It is time to save the lives of our troops, by bringing them home at once!

Why throw more resources to a mistake?

Does Hitler still hold Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, the Channel Islands, Libya, Greece, the Baltic States, the Ukraine and a few assorted other places? Hell, he got to Chechnya in 1942.

A lightning strike and the felling of a government does not constitute the winning of a war. This also leads to a shockingly simple rejoinder: what's the government going to be when and if this Versailles-created amalgam state ever does simmer down to some kind of normalcy? It may be much worse than the Baathists, so we may have lost in every conceivable way.

John Abizaid can huff and crow about how we've been in theatre for three years and never lost an engagement above the platoon level, but that means nothing. We can die singly and lose everything without ever being engaged at the company level; he's talking about warfare, not insurgency.

Kerry is still not offering a real alternative to birdbrain. 4 more years of an immoral and illegal occupation that's creating chaos? Not to mention adding recruits to the "terrorists".

He's trying to play it "smart" and "safe" and it's not working. Someone should inform him.

It's nice to see someone speaking the truth.

about a conversation I had with a family friend. He is home from Iraq on hardship leave. He has to go back in a week. He always teased me about Clinton, who he hated.

Anyway, this guy said to me "We have lost the war in Iraq. Its over. The population is totally against us. We could go in anywhere and defeat them from a military standpoint but it just makes more insurgents. They don't back the interim government because they think we do. It's over. There are large parts of the country we can't or won't go in and they have been totally taken over by insurgents. Those insurgents know we won't take them on until after the election. So they are stockpiling weapons and digging in deeper. After the election, Bush is going to order us to clean those areas up, which will be a disaster. We'll go in, kill a lot of people, and cause even more of the population to hate us. It's over, we lost, and it's Bush fault"

The strangest thing is I asked if he was voting for Kerry and he said NO! I looked shocked and then he smiled sort of grimly and said "Listen, I want this thing hung right around Georgie's neck. When it blows up - he needs to be in the drivers seat." I tried to argue with him, but he just shook his head and walked away.

I'm at a loss why kerry cannot say this very thing. We have nothing more to lose, and it would probably win the election. People know this war is causing the deficit to implode, high gas prices...people are depressed...worried about sons, daughters and loved ones who are there or going there.

What would be wrong with pulling completely out?

We can and must do the same!

Unfortunately, IG, it took how long for Americans to realize that about Vietnam?

Let's see: Tonkin Gulf Resolution (August 1964); Tet Offensive (February 1968); Paris Accords (February 1973); fall of Saigon (April 1975).

I agree with you: I'd feel a lot better about Kerry if he said today that the occupation of Iraq is hopeless and the only thing to do is get out. However, I believe Kerry is a pragmatist and, whether he says it now or whether he says it months after he takes office, he will say it and that will be a lot sooner than your favorite Frat Boy and mine will say it.

which is why we must speedily end this one without any additional loss of life on either side. You are right in that our political leaders and institutions were a miserable failure when it came to biting the bullet on that other war. Remember when Congress refused to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, even after everyone knew that we had been lied to by President Johnson? Let's not repeat the same mistakes!

about Cokie Roberts saying, 'IF there is a disaster in Iraq, it could effect Bush's numbers'

IF ??

The disaster is NOW and Iraq is spiraling downward into greater and more horrifying disaster by the hour.
Roberts just echoes what most of the media has been projecting.
Perhaps our most compelling task is to somehow get through to the American public that Bush lost his war and it just keeps getting worse!
How do that, I'm not sure, but lets keep writing those LTTEs.

It's true enough, but do you honestly believe that the American people want to hear that, or will respond favorably to it? We're a mob, and we don't like being told when we lose freedoms or wars. If we've constructed a pleasant fantasy covering up our loss of either, we will attack most viciously those who try and poke a hole in it, however correct or true their statements may be.

The GIs on the ground know that the war is lost. Bush is in denial. It is time to tell the truth about Iraq, or else we are no different from the GOP.