Questions to the General and Some Answers to His Rhetoric

There's a joke among employees who have worked overtime. It goes,

"you've done a good job, now take the rest of the day off." So goes

the rhetoric of General Petraeus. He has had the unmitigated gall to

inform us that he is hopeful that we can perhaps draw down troops in

the spring of 2008. Now I'm no general, but it seems this fella' is

stating the obvious. As I recall, troop deployments have been

extended to fifteen months which will support the surge until the

spring of 2008, at which time they will have to further extend their

tours. This is obviously just some kind of political bone being

thrown to those who do not support the war and I take exception to the

general trying that deception.

And, why haven't any of our illustrious elected officials asked some

rather obvious questions of the general? Here are just a few of my

recommendations:

"General, if things don't go well, are you willing to further extend

troop deployments?"

"General, what effect have the extended deployments had on our troops

and how would they be effected by further extending those

deployments?"

"General, will you ever recommend a draft?"

"General, how accurate are your numbers given the mass displacement of Iraqis?"

"General, do the numbers on your charts (even if they are lower)

indicate an acceptable number of American and Iraqi casualties?

"General, what will be the state of our Armed Forces and their

readiness if we continue in Iraq? Begin redeployment? Immediately

redeploy?"

"General, how much money is it going to cost us to get our military

back to where it was before this war?"

"General are you aware that if each day you visited the grave site of

an American Serviceman who died in this war, you'd spend the next ten

years of your life doing just that?"

As we used to tell sailors their first time at sea - "Shipmate, it

doesn't really matter how deep the water is if you're drowning." We

are drowning in Iraq. We are drowning in violence and destruction.

We are drowning in mayhem and death. We are drowning in not only the

financial debt, but the moral one this country shall have to bear for

future generations. One word should finally be the clarion call of

every American with the courage to see the truth -- ENOUGH!