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Saturday, March 03, 2007

Time runs out for Baghdad brains trust

Time runs out for Baghdad brains trust : "AN ELITE team of officers advising the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has concluded that the US military has six months to win the war or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force it into a hasty retreat."
There is nothing to win and nothing to lose. Iraq was never a threat to us and Saddam Hussein's removal could have been done differently. I do not believe in living in the past. What is done is done and we have brought too much death and destruction to Iraq and ourselves and it's a gaping hole sucking in life and money. I should have thought we had learned some lessons from Vietnam which could be applied now. I should have thought that we could manage a sensible withdrawal which preserves their right to deal with the mess we dealt them in their own way and an acknowledgement we have tried to repair it and have succeeded with some things but that we are generally contributing to the mess now. If you are beating a child you do not see it as a sign of weakness that you stop beating it. I really do think we have the wrong mind set on this. The Brains Trust is a good idea. It's a way of looking at a problem in a rational way.We need to sit with the Iraqi people and manage the situation from this point so that we can let them run their country. Being there is not working. We need to not be there and offer other sorts of support.

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