Posted on 01/28/2005 9:28:00 AM PST by demlosers
TANYA NOLAN: As President Bush calls for resolve in the face of attempts by insurgents to undermine the elections, a US Senator is calling for American troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. The liberal Democrat Ted Kennedy says the US military is now part of the problem.
But, as Washington correspondent John Shovelan reports, even members of Senator Kennedy's own party don't agree.
JOHN SHOVELAN: Ted Kennedy calls the war in Iraq President Bush's Vietnam.
TED KENNEDY: This is Vietnam again.
JOHN SHOVELAN: And just a few days before the Iraqi elections, Senator Kennedy urged the administration for a specific commitment to withdraw all US troops over the next year, beginning with an immediate withdrawal of 12,000 and completing it by early 2006.
Senator Kennedy says the war in Iraq has become a war against the US.
TED KENNEDY: We must learn from our mistakes. We must recognise what a large and growing number of Iraqis now believe the war in Iraq has become a war against the American occupation.
JOHN SHOVELAN: Some polls suggest 92 per cent of Iraqis see the US as an occupation force.
Senator Kennedy has previously described the war as a fraud made up in Texas, and said the administration misled the people about the threats leading up to it.
Now he says the US forces and the insurgents are battling for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, and the US is losing.
TED KENNEDY: We have reached the point that a prolonged American military presence in Iraq is no longer productive for either Iraq or the United States. The US military presence has become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
We need a serious course correction. And we need it now. We must make it for the American soldiers who are paying with their lives.
JOHN SHOVELAN: Democrats this week launched a blistering attack on the administration's Iraq policy, and forced a nine-hour debate on the nomination of the President's Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, while the White House has begun implementing an aggressive plan which paints the Iraq election and the US commitment there as vital to its interests.
But it's a communication strategy which is struggling. A Wall Street Journal poll has found 52 per cent of people don't believe the war in Iraq was worth it.
Despite this public slump in support, the Democrat warhorse, Senator Kennedy's view wasn't supported by fellow Democrat Senator Bill Nelson.
BILL NELSON: If we turn tail and pull out, the place would erupt into civil war, there would be all kind of chaos. Terrorism loves a vacuum, the terrorists would fill it.
JOHN SHOVELAN: The White House has refused to discuss a time line for troop withdrawal, saying the goal first is to ensure Iraqis are capable of maintaining their own security.
John Shovelan, Washington.
Pray for W and Our Troops
A Chapaqwuidack to the chin?
But the democrats to this day say it was Nixon's war. Never will any democrat admit that there was a democrat congress and President that started the war. Further more the press keeps up the lie as they say the war in Vietnam was won by Viet Cong fighters. There were no more Viet Cong after Tet to worry about. Over 99.9% of the fight was done by the uniformed military of North Vietnam.
Good for you, but I'd never get near that state of the land of kooks that give that state of insane a bad name. Kerry / Kennedy, there must be something in the water... Then again, The Swimmer knows all about that.
Kennedy is the one in the trailer in front of you
on the Freeway.....It's called a Horses....XXX,,Jake
Seperated At Birth???
Too bad his dad Joe didn't have a timely withdrawal.
One thing i never understood about those Kennedy's. All that money...how come they never got their teeth fixed.
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