Editorial: Iraq will be unwelcome inheritance for next president

Sacramento Bee ^ | 3/26/8 | Editor

[SmithL]

In May 2003, a little more than a month after President Bush launched his invasion of Iraq, the United States had 150,000 troops there. At the time, Bush declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." We know now that a long occupation was just beginning.

For most of the intervening years, U.S. troop levels have hovered between 130,000 and 150,000. Then came Bush's major troop escalation (the "surge"), which brought U.S. troop levels to a peak of 171,000 last October. At the time, Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, told Congress that he expected U.S. troop levels to return to pre-surge levels of 140,000 by July.

What then? That question never has been answered – and will not be during the remaining 10 months of the Bush administration. Now Petraeus is recommending what he's calling a "pause," a euphemism for delaying any further decisions about troop levels. In short, Americans can expect to see 140,000 troops remain in Iraq from July until the end of the Bush presidency in January.

. . . Five years into the Iraq misadventure, Iraq is still in chaos. Our Army, in the words of U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, is "out of balance, consumed by the current fight and unable to do the things we know we need to do to properly sustain our all-volunteer force and restore our flexibility for an uncertain future."

Bush's only plan seems to be to leave Iraq to the next president.

[NoLibZone]

US or Russian next President?

The Russians are laughing their heads off that we used 4,000 US boys and trillions of Dollars to secure their oil fields.

See : “Russia’s Lukoil says step forward made in Iraqi oil project”

[onguard]

No time like the present to figure out what the next president should do.