Rumsfeld just announced that troops will be drawn down to 138,000

[Mass]

people after the Dec election. (Does Rumsfeld cut and run?)

[rox63]

1. Isn't that what Kerry is suggesting

as a start to a larger draw-down?

Is * stealing Kerry's ideas again?

[Mass]

2. Yes, but of course not stealing the most important ones.

like pulling the troops out of Iraq totally.

[Mass]

3. and Murtha said that the troops would be out before the end of the year

(seems awfully close to what Kerry and Feingold said), and that for now, they should be redeployed toward the periphery of Iraq (vs garnison for Kerry).

Are there converging toward a unified solution or is it just natural tweaking to make the message clearer ?

[frogmarch]

4. Reminds me

of a movie I saw once, in which a field worker yelled "QUITTIN' TIME!" when the bell sounded, signaling the end of the work day.

The foreman angrily told him, "I'm the foreman. I'll say when it's quittin' time!" Then he cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, "QUITTIN' TIME!"

I had a feeling Bushco would do something like this. Just so the public is aware that it wasn't Bushco's idea - that it was Kerry's. Of course it's a good thing either way, but I don't want the assholes getting credit for something they stole from Kerry or any other Democrat.

[fedupinBushcountry]

5. Right after Kerry's Iraq speech

or it may of been before that that he had mentioned that the troops could be withdrawn. Then magically a few days later there was an article that said Rumsfeld said that this exact same amount could be withdrawn.

Coincidence? I don't think so, I think he was pressured into doing it since Kerry stated the reasons that these troops were used for the elections and that is all.

This is not the first time that things said by Kerry or others on the left have put the H on the spot and in return they flip-flopped on their original stance.

Chalk one up for our side and John Kerry.

[ProSense]

6. Rummy is a dummy

The Bush administration is caged in criticism and the only thing no-clue Rummy can do is parrot Kerry.

Let me add, Murtha is doing an excellent job slamming Bush and getting the details out about what's going on in Iraq. Having said that, I have a lot of reservations about his plan and some of the statements he made this morning on MTP:

He doesn't think any president would deliberately mislead… (let's Bush off the hook when there is evidence to the contrary

He wants to move our people to the periphery (permanent bases in the region?)


Not motivated to point any of this out in GD yet, but others have. Since I feeling a little lazy, let me parrot two fellow KGers:

"Kerry says get rid of the permanent bases in every Iraq speech for 2yrs," blm.

"Great job Democrats, Kerry, Murtha and all of us on doing this. Let's keep the pressure on, keep the focus on getting out of Iraq and holding this administration accountable, and let's try to stop our own self-destructive infighting," ray of light

[whometense]

8. Yeah.

What about those permanent bases?? Has anyone heard a single member of the administration address that question?

[whometense]

7. No, not at all.

He's just talking about what they said they were planning to do all along. :sarcasm:

Rumsfeld is a tool, and a fucking liar. He should have been fired back when Kerry first called for his head - when was that?? Way back.

[fedupinBushcountry]

9. Sept. 2003

Kerry was the first to do so.

[Mass]

10. I may be paranoid, but what Murtha elaborated this morning seems a

lot like what PNAC would look to me.

Pull the troops. Put them in the periphery. Create a Middle East intervention force in the neighborhood. This seems a lot like permanent basis to me.

Let be clear. I like the idea of Murtha calling for withdrawing the troops, but, in this case, let's withdraw the troops and call for the UN to monitor the situation, not for a permanent US force over there.

I just hope the Dems are not falling for one of those tricks, where you propose something that is actually something else.

I really did not like the idea that he was not ready to say Bush misled us as well.

[whometense]

11. Maybe this will cause him

to lose his god status on GD.

I feel the same misgivings about this that you do.

[ProSense]

15. Same feelings here.

It's about those nuances Tay Tay mentioned in another thread. The Democrats have to show support for other Democrats against Republican smear tactics. They don't however have to agree with the premise or details of every plan every Democrat puts forth. At a time when unity is critical, mostly because of people's inability to deal with nuance, it can leave the Democrats vulnerable to Republican traps. And the noise (not constructive criticism, noise) from some of these so-called Democratic supporters only adds to the problem: "Oh we want to hold Bush accountable, but first let's get the Democrats." How about get Bush first then we'll address your damn whining (or legitimate concerns :eyes:?

What I don't understand is how the Republicans get away with lying, misstatements, whatever. Does the Republican base hold them accountable for anything? I remember seeing a clip where the news anchor trapped Rumsfeld in a flat out lie. Do the Republican voters not see this?

[karynnj]

18. Interesting

He is after all a hawk.

[fedupinBushcountry]

12. Somehting just came to me

The billboards in Republican districts, troops home for the holidays. Now I see it more clearly.

So now I guess we will just have to wait and see, if they really bring home 20,000. Words spoken without actions taken................

[TayTay]

13. So there are 150,000 troops there now.

There would need to be 8,000 more to meet Sen. Kerry's goal of 20,000 withdrawn. (3-4 more brigades, I think.) That 8,000 number is important. It means that we are actually drawing down the numbers of the long term and not just the temporary infusion of troops that were needed for additional peace-keeping for the Dec. 15th elections.

Of course the Rethugs are stealing the Dems ideas. They don't have any ideas at all. The ones they do have parrot the PNAC goals of an American hegemony that continues far into this century and guarantees America's dominance on the world stage by military fear. Well, the military fear did not appear. (The PNAC gang were flipped out when resistance happened at the very beginning of this war. They really believed their own bullshit about the Americans being greeted as liberators and that any resistance offered by the Iraqis would be token and would disappear quickly. Wrong, wrong, wrong.)

We are nation-building. Bushies hate nation-building. It violates all their conservative principles. The Bushies and the Rethugs hate the idea of nation-building in this country. Witness their underhanded double-dealings on rebuilding the Gulf area in the United States. They despise this stuff. The whole reason they want to hold power is to tear down and throw away social programs that, to them, artifially prop up the poor and deny the poor a chance to go out and achieve a better status through work. If they hate it here (and are using Katrina as an excuse to dismantle social programs) they will fight tooth and nail not to do it overseas.

These people are well and truly caught. They have no plans that make coherent sense. They don't really want to build anything that resembles social services in IRaq because they loathe and hate that. They want to control the ones who control Iraq's oil fields. (Why wasn't Chalabi arrested upon setting foot in the US? Because the US still believes he can be persuaded to favor the US in oil dealings above all other nations. We want our oil.) They hate asking any other nation to come in and help with the effort in Iraq because that shows weakness to them. (Which, as our esteemed MA Jr Senator says is simply not true. Sen. Kerry has a very, very different political philosophy than the PNAC crowd. They can't fully steal his ideas, they are a terrible fit for them.)

[ginnyinWI]

14. The Freepers are going to get whiplash. n/t

[_dynamicdems]

16. How will this play in Peoria?

Will anyone remember that Kerry called for this first?

[TayTay]

17. In a larger sense, that doesn't matter.

What will matter is that he had a consistent view of the entirety of the debacle in Iraq and that he was pushing to incorporate this into a consistent, across-the-board Democratic response for 2006.

If anyone is looking to this with an eye on 2008, no they won't remember per se. But they will remember that he was in the process of developing a comprehensive theory of the whole of this war and what went wrong.

Kerry has repeatedly mentioned the DSM, sometimes by name and sometimes by intent. That speaks to the beginning of the war and how this nation was going to go to war no matter what Congress thought or said. The intelligence was cooked. The Congress was (illegally, I think) denied access to critical information on purpose by the White House. (This completely breaks the separation of powers concept, but Rethugs don't care about policies like that.)

Kerry has repeatedly made the case that the military itself was woefully under-prepared to fight this war. The realities of desert combat were ignored. (One of the great untold stories of this debacle will be how much it will cost to resupply the military. Sen. Kerry said every one year in Iraq is like 7-15 years of normal wear and tear on equipment alone.) Our troops were not sent into battle with the proper equipment or training. When KErry spoke during the campaign about the initial invasion needing several times the amount of troops it had to have a successful invasion of IRaq, he was correct. Because the Rethugs believed their own bullshit and thought the very sight of the US military would cause capitulation, they didn't properly prepare for the long grind and horrible insurgency that has erupted. (This doesn't mean Kerry supported full-scale war. It means that he saw the Rethug House of cards for what it was way back when.)

Kerry is seeing around corners on how to deal with a draw-down of troops. This is critical. He has articulated plans that no one else is seeing. Murtha is still dealing with the 'here and now' of Iraq. He is saying that at this time, nothing is working and a drawback is the only available option. Kerry is seeing beyond that and is articulating a way to bring in allies, make IRaq speed up the training of it's own troops and police and become accountable for their own destiny and so forth. Kerry is trying to see to the step after the next step. No one else is doing that. They are stuck in looking at the quagmire aspect of it.

This is only just begun. We have to consider what happens next, even after a draw-down of troops. We do have a stake in having Iraq not be a failed state. (So does the entire world.) Who is articulating that view? Who is seeing around corners on that?

During the Q&A in Georgetown after Sen. Kerry's great speech, he was asked about Syria and their support for the various islamic fundamentalist factions. You could see him pause, and in his mind, go over three or four steps ahead on what is going on in Syria.

I think Sen. Kerry knows that Iraq will not be on the table in 2007 the way it is today. I don't think a lot of what happens between now and the mid-terms will matter come 2007-2008. What will matter is what comes next. He is preparing for that next step.

[_dynamicdems]

19. Reading this makes me think about the deafening silence from

Hillary Clinton. Is she hoping that all of this will not be on the table in 2007? I've wondered why Dems have either come out in favor of getting out of Iraq or have remained completely mum on the subject. Some may hope they can ride it out. Let others take stands they may later regret. Better safe than sorry?