NYT: Republicans, Democrats, and the War in Iraq.

[cyclezealot]

Reason I have stopped listening to the Democrats Debates. Sick of hearing about Agents of Change. Instead of real policy debates. Sounds like the New York Times/ International Herald Trubune is not pleased with the debates' answers either . I find them boring. Just like polls show Americans not happy with the Democratic Congress' handling of the war. .The presidential debates seem just as evasive. . The Time's is not happy keeping troops in Iraq until 2013, as Hillary once suggested ./ Excerpts below of the Times editorial . I have stopped watching the debates ever since MSNBC and Blitzer did all in their power to muzzle Dennis Kucinich , well before the New Year. Ever since same old boring agent of change crap. Meanwhile Democrats seem to denegrate the works of Martin Luther King and did not Hillary Clinton, once not totally repudiate the use of pre-emptive war. ?

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Iraq will be a central challenge - perhaps the central challenge - for whoever succeeds President George W. Bush and has to repair the profound damage he has wrought with a war that should never have been fought and has been managed so ineptly. The candidates must talk more to the American people about when troops will be withdrawn and how it will be done, as well as how they will manage relations with Iraq and the region.
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Yet the war has receded as a major topic on the campaign trail, much to the relief of the Republican candidates, who never stray far from the party line but know that Americans overwhelmingly want the troops home
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Except for Representative Ron Paul - who wants all troops withdrawn immediately but is hardly going to be the nominee - the Republican candidates are slavishly wedded to Bush's policy of war without end.
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The Democratic candidates all want to end the war, although the issue is no longer as defining for their campaigns as it once was, because casualties are down, the administration has made a minimal effort to reduce force levels, and the economy is teetering on a recession. The Democrats' message has been compromised by the repeated failure of their party to pass legislation demanding that Bush alter his Iraq policy.

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Many important issues have not been fully examined. What is to become of the thousands of Iraqis who helped America and its coalition partners as translators, drivers and fixers and will face retribution? What will be the nature and content of a long-term agreement on future Iraqi-American relations? Will Congress have a say in it? Will the United States retain bases in Iraq or elsewhere in the region? Should the United Nations be involved, as Clinton and Obama suggest?

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No serious candidate in 2008 can renounce the potential use of force to defend national security or in retaliation for an attack on the United States. But no voter should cast a ballot for a candidate who will not forswear such wars of choice. We hope American voters have learned the lesson of 2000, when Bush escaped serious questioning on foreign affairs during the campaign. He then turned sensible policies on their head and bumbled his way into a disastrous war.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/13/opinion/ediraq.php?page=2