WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton hit back Friday at a Pentagon aide who charged that her questions about Iraq withdrawal planning have the effect of helping the enemy - calling the accusation a spurious dodge of a serious issue.

Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for president, had asked the Pentagon to detail how it is planning for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq. She first raised the issue in May, pointing out that whenever troops leave, it will be no simple task to transport the people, equipment, and vehicles out of Iraq, possibly through hostile territory.

As much as I totally, completely, thoroughly and absolutely despise Hillary Clinton, to be fair, she did ask a legitimate question…

To what purpose and intent she plans on using any answer she may get is anyone’s guess, but that IS a legitimate question, she won’t get ANY kind of a legitimate answer though, simply because there isn’t one, the Bush administration is still planning on ways to put off making a report on Iraq, how can they be expected to be forward thinking enough to actually be planning a viable exit plan from Iraq??

Eric Edelman, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy, offered a sharply-worded response, saying such discussions boost the enemy.

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,” Edelman wrote. His tough language in a letter obtained Thursday was surprising in part because it came in correspondence with a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has oversight of the Pentagon.

In other words, ‘uh, we really don’t know, haven’t got to that part yet’, which is rather typical of the Bush administration…

Here’s something for Mr. Edelman to consider though, if you want to change the perception that we have abandoned our allies, stop doing it, but hanging out in Iraq, waiting for those idiots to grasp a clue and begin to actually govern their own nation isn’t winning any friends either, the Bush administration went at this thing in the worst possible way, they tried to fight a politically correct combat action, and that is a contradiction in terminology if ever there was one, and Mr. Edelman, if you haven’t noticed, Iraq isn’t our ALLY, we can’t even get a substantial number of their troops and police to take a stand on their own behalf…

We blew it in Iraq, almost as soon as Saddam was deposed, we assumed, and by WE I mean the Bush administration, we assumed that the Iraqis would view us as liberators, they were of mixed emotions on that assumption at best, we assumed that the Iraqis would stand and fight for their own freedom and on that assumption we are rapidly finding out that it just isn’t the case, we assumed that Iraq would welcome an American style democracy with open arms, not taking into consideration the very FACT that the Iraqis had no concept of democracy…

We blew it and ever since that time, Iraq has been a giant screw up as we have sacrificed our troops and their lives for a people that have no intention of standing up to anyone or anything, other than their standing up to us, because if the Iraqi people would support the U.S. effort on their behalf more than they support the efforts of the insurgency and al-Qaida terrorists that are desperately trying to keep Iraq bound to a centuries old concept that falsely claims to be The Religion of Peace, well, this would all be a lot easier…

A plan to get our troops out would be in order before we worried about the logistics necessary to making the trip happen, and sadly, I don’t see our troops leaving Iraq for a very long time, I fear we have a long planning stage ahead of us…

Full Story Here:
Clinton Hits Back at Pentagon Official

Trackback URL:
http://texasfred.net/archives/355/trackback/