Iraq government-the one the US has created-should be in charge of its fate

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http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060627/OPINION/60626018/1014

Iraq government — the one the U.S. has created — should be in charge of its fate

<snip>The Bush administration should neither “stay the course” nor “cut and run.” Instead, the president should leave the fate of Iraq to the government he created there.

The reason Bush gave us for launching a preemptive war in Iraq was to wipe out Saddam Hussein’s cache of weapons of mass destruction. In the process of discovering that Saddam didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction, American forces toppled the brutal dictator, defeated and disbanded his army and disassembled Iraq’s governing bureaucracy.

As a result, the troops Bush sent to war in Iraq have been forced to remain there to police the country while a new made-in-America government was being cobbled together. Now that this government is in place, it should be given a reasonable amount of time to marshal its forces and stand on its feet.

That shouldn’t take long. The country’s army and police force were being reconstituted long before the political process the Bush administration imposed upon Iraq produced an elected government.

So it shouldn’t take long for the Iraqi government to fend for itself. How long? I think a matter of months, not years.