Hill Dems petition Bush on Iraq - Democrats Letter to President Bush April 4, 2008

A group of senior house Democrats today urged President Bush to overhaul current Iraq policy and encourage leaders of that country to bolster its political and military infrastructure.

The leaders said the recent troop buildup in Iraq had not achieved its purpose and urged Bush to direct troops to play a more limited role in Iraq and divert freed up resources to other regions such as the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

April 4, 2008

The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The war in Iraq is in its sixth year. More than 4,000 Americans have been killed and 30,000 wounded in a conflict which has already cost the nation’s taxpayers more than half a trillion dollars. In our nation’s long history since securing our independence, only one war, Vietnam, has been longer and only one, World War II, has been more costly.

We are deeply concerned that you and the congressional Republican leadership are intent on staying the current course throughout your Administration and then handing the Iraq war off to future presidents. Indeed, some in your party have indicated we should be prepared to stay in Iraq for fifty or even one hundred years. That would only compound the damage done to our national security by years of flawed Iraq policies.

The American people favor and our national security demands a different, better way. We salute the courage and hard work of our troops during more than five years of dangerous and difficult service. But the strategic purpose of the surge strategy you announced more than a year ago – creating the conditions for Iraqis to forge a political solution in order to hasten the day our troops can return home – has not been achieved. In fact, your Administration recently indicated that more U.S. troops will remain deployed in Iraq after the surge has ended than were there when the surge began. This is not what the American people were led to expect when you announced the surge nearly fifteen months ago.

The current Iraq strategy has no discernible end in sight and requires the United States to spend additional hundreds of billions of dollars despite urgent national needs in education, health care, and infrastructure improvement, and when high oil prices have provided the Iraqi government with billions in additional revenue that could pay for their own redevelopment and security. This strategy is neither sustainable nor in our broader national security or economic interest. That is why we favor the following four-part strategy to change course:

First, we must urgently seek political accommodation among Iraqis and transition the U.S. mission in Iraq. Our military has done its best in Iraq; it is time for the Iraqis and the Administration’s civilian leaders to do their part. The current Administration policy fails to hold the Iraqis accountable for the lack of progress on political reconciliation and instead holds our troops hostage to an ineffective government. We must demand that others who are key to progress in Iraq exhibit the bravery, creativity and urgency that our troops have shown. We must shift to what General Petraeus has termed a posture of strategic overwatch so that we create additional incentives for the Iraqis to embrace political accommodation which will allow us to reduce US troop levels substantially and devote more of our resources to a number of other important national security challenges. We will also continue to insist on a strong Congressional role in shaping any long-term security arrangements pertaining to Iraq. Your Administration should not create facts that bind the hands of the next president.

Second, we must restore the highest state of readiness to our Army and Marine Corps. Repeated and extended deployments to Iraq have greatly strained our military’s capabilities. Readiness has sunk to levels not seen since Vietnam. Units do not have enough time at home to achieve through training the full-spectrum combat capabilities on which our security depends. We have no ready reserve for an unexpected crisis. We must begin immediately to restore the readiness of our Army and Marine Corps by returning to 12 month deployments, and providing active and reserve units sufficient time at home between deployments to retrain and reequip. We must also continue to provide our warriors, wounded warriors, and veterans with the benefits and services they deserve.

Third, we must dedicate sufficient resources to secure Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Qaeda’s senior leadership – including Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri – has reportedly reconstituted to pre-9/11 strength in safe-havens along the Afghanistan / Pakistan border. This was exacerbated when your Administration supported a Pakistani peace deal in the tribal areas giving al Qaeda’s senior leadership time to regroup in this border area. We must refocus our attention on this grave and growing Al Qaeda threat, increasing our military, diplomatic, and economic development efforts in both countries, instead of tying up the bulk of our resources in Iraqi internal sectarian violence.

Finally, we must tackle broader challenges of regional stability. We must address two important security challenges – Iran and the ongoing turmoil that confronts our ally Israel and moderate Arab regimes, particularly Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Regional stability is being hindered by the Administration’s Iraq strategy. The long-term challenge posed by Iran requires serious and sustained diplomatic and political effort, and the current Iraq policy is undermining our ability to meet that challenge. The Administration has not yet engaged in effective diplomacy to work with regional and international partners to forge a longer-term regional security architecture. We believe you must pursue an energetic and effective diplomatic effort to get others in the region invested in addressing Iraq’s political, economic and security issues as well as these broader regional stability challenges.

We believe there is still time for you to recognize that a change in strategy is necessary to repair the grave damage done to our nation’s security. We are committed to bringing about the necessary changes of course articulated in the four-part plan above and hope you will work with us. Implementing elements of this plan will be the focus of our legislative efforts. At the same time as we move forward legislatively, we will press for accountability and oversight on the increasing costs and devastating consequences that the current strategy is having on our national security posture. And Congress and its committees will be preparing to ensure the smoothest possible transition for the next President.

Thank you for the opportunity to share these views. We look forward to a vigorous debate this spring on these critically important strategic questions.

Sincerely,

Nancy Pelosi Harry Reid
Speaker of the House Senate Majority Leader

Steny H. Hoyer Richard J. Durbin
House Majority Leader Senate Assistant Majority Leader

Ike Skelton Carl Levin
Chairman, House Armed Services Chairman, Senate Armed Services Committee Committee

Howard Berman Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Chairman, House Foreign Affairs Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Committee

Silvestre Reyes John D. Rockefeller IV Chairman, House Permanent Chairman, Senate Select
Select Committee on Committee on Intelligence Intelligence

John Murtha Daniel K. Inouye
Chairman, House Defense Chairman, Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Appropriations Subcommittee

Nita Lowey Patrick J. Leahy
Chairwoman, House State Chairman, Senate State and
and Foreign Operations Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee Appropriations Subcommittee

Thanks for the link:

(Rewrite)I wondered about this sudden turn of events (Response to: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1997218/posts to Washington Times article )with the cease fire recognized by al Sadr, plus his recent claim to being going back to his "education", under guidance from his father; plus his earlier statements on the success of the coalition troops over his gang (militia)in their separation suggestion of inevitable defeat. Plus, his recent loss of followers(with families) once they grew tired of the fighting and recognized life changes for the better in Iraq(lost in the mainstream media, however). So found this which might help explain:

Retired Major William "Mac" McCallister spent more than four years in Iraq, much of it as an adviser to the Marines on Iraq's tribes and culture. Here's how Mac sees the recent Maliki-Sadr clash:

1. Fighting is a form of negotiation to gain an advantage and not necessarily to gain control of a given situation. Maliki government perceives an opportunity to gain advantage due to weakening of Organization of Martyr Sadr (OMS).

2. On the other hand do not discount the likelihood that IA [Iraqi Army] are targeting rogue JAM [Jaysh al-Mahdi, Sadr's militia] units that failed to rally to Sadr in the last 6 months. A number of reports implied that one to the reasons Muqtada al Sadr initiated the cease fire was to verify loyalty of JAM militias to OMS. Those that did not respond may well be the "target audience". If this is the case then I am inclined to believe that Maliki and Muqtada al Sadr are in communication to "manage the violence".

3. The timing for this punitive expedition is about right. The "awakening" meme [tribal resistance to extremist, which began in Iraq's west] has infected Arab tribes in the south. Arab tribes that happen to Shia. Many southern tribal leaders have openly expressed their "disappointment" with OMS and rogue militias for a while now, due to their inability to "fix" economic and security conditions. The tribes are a powerful lobbying group, especially in the south since most are engaged in agriculture. Agriculture translates into "power" since you have to feed the cities.

Conclusion. This is a punitive expedition only. The short-term objective is to assist Sadr in ridding himself of rogue elements so as to make him a more stable long-term political partner and more reliable participant in governance. The Maliki government, although it seeks to consolidate its hold on power knows it can not do so without the help of Sadr. The intermediate objective is to maintain Sadr as a viable and potential political ally for he is needed against the numerous groups also seeking greater influence such as Fadilah, Hakim family, Sunni tribes and the Kurds. The long-term objective will be determined as this thing plays itself out.-- Source

There are those, however; that would want to see a failure in what could be considered a very powerful truce and another success in Iraq. ..Al-sadr pretty much said publicly that they have lost their war..they underestimated our troops.

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Steny H. Hoyer Richard J. Durbin, Ike Skelton, Carl Levin, Howard Berman, Joseph R. Biden Jr.,Silvestre Reyes, John D. Rockefeller IV, John Murtha, Daniel K. Inouye, Nita Lowey, Patrick J. Leahy and their "factoid deficient" media still seek to promote and secure A White Flag Loss in Iraq; which I find unpatriotic no matter what hierarchical relationship in named leadership they so chair; or in the case of the media, twisted sense of guidelines one thinks he or she aspires to in regard to their so called journalistic integrity.

There is fact, there is fiction. The failure, by all of the above in their purposeful neglect of truth in reporting are criminals in their shared profiteering (campaign donations, job status) through their destructive acts of self-serving political propaganda.

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