Five years ago, President Bush dressed up in a flight suit for a self-congratulatory photo op on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner that proclaimed "Mission Accomplished". Certainly, the war was not over then and victory was not achieved. The mission has been redefined several times and what the president hopes to accomplish in Iraq is unclear.
Five years after "Mission Accomplished", the costs to human life continue to build. Since then, nearly four thousand brave American servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and over 5 million Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons have been forced from their homes.
Five years after "Mission Accomplished", the strain on our economy is becoming unbearable. Congress has appropriated over $500 billion, and we are spending an average of $245 million a day in Iraq. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate economist, has estimated the total costs to our economy, including caring for our veterans and rebuilding our military, will top $3 trillion dollars. The cost of the Iraq war to the average American family this year will be $16,000.
Five years after "Mission Accomplished", the fact remains that there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq. Instead of working to find political solutions that will calm the warring sects, our continued military presence has further entrenched the divisions on all sides of the conflict and may be creating the conditions for a further discord. In many cities, the president's solution is to literally erect concrete walls between neighboring communities. The administration is now threatening to compound its mistakes throughout the Middle East by employing the same saber-rattling scare tactics against Iran as those that led us into the Iraq war.
Those who oppose President Bush's policies must offer suggestions for a successful path forward, and we believe we can present a better vision for the foreign policy challenges our nation faces. As leaders of the Congressional Out of Iraq Caucus, we have worked hard to educate Members of Congress about the failures and mismanagement of the Iraqi occupation. We have challenged the president on his claim that there is a credible government in Iraq; we have raised questions about the promised Iraqi oil revenue paying for the rebuilding of Iraq; we have called for investigations of contractors who are allegedly ripping off the American taxpayers; and we have crafted legislation to address these problems and more. Most importantly, we have introduced legislation that would require that war funding only be spent to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq.
The Out of Iraq Caucus remains committed to ending this unconscionable, misguided, and costly war in Iraq. We will not give up until our troops are safely returned to their children and their families. Five years after "Mission Accomplished", the president is requesting more than $100 billion to continue this war in Iraq through 2008. We call on our colleagues in Congress to resist the president's request. It is time to end the war in Iraq.
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A simple 'thank you' for completing that which Democrats couldn't do will suffice.
....for advising me of just the latest lie to come out of the Republican Insurgency against the American government that masquerade
So now we went to war to finish DEM-starte
How long do you think it takes the average American in 2008 to dump these comments and assertions on the scrapheap of REP lies about Iraq and the War on Terror stacking up atop of WMD, involvemen
How long really? Because you obviously are not close if you're still posting such nonsense with a straight face; though I guess, someone has to do the "blocking and tackling" and non-glamou
Rep. Barbara Lee representi
Reps. Waters & Woosley were among the first Superdeleg
Let's hope they are willing to revisit their endorsemen
I have the same problem with flag flogging.
Let's see that and then we'll talk impeachmen
it is all about. Money, money, money, money and money. All the young dead children's caskets
should be lined up end to end and end up at the front door of the Whitehouse
If we didn't have media ownership in bed with the military we probably wouldn't be at war right now. I'd suggest that if you want to prevent the next war in Iran you start getting some answers from the networks.
Obama/Boxe
1. U.S. troops have achieved victory by completing the primary objectives as defined at the beginning of the Iraq war. President Bush has said the troops should “return on success.” It’s time to do exactly that.
2. Representa
3. Next week, the House will vote on an Iraq War appropriat
HR5507 should be a prerequisi
Our presidenti
4. We have an opportunit
After all, what could be more Presidenti
Please just step aside and let the men and women who have the nerve and resolve to defeat our enemies do their job. If we had listened to you a year ago, Al-Qeada in Iraq would be murdering Iraqis by the thousands.
And how many terrorists did we kill before the "Mission Accomplish
How many innocent Iraqi's? 20,000?
Where/who are "our enemies"? Do you even have a clue?
Truth sorta starts at the balance point. At ease then from here/there on out is eyewash. The rest shifts real to what goes on. The truth of the matter we experience