A withdrawal not in America's or Iraq's best interests

"A premature American departure from Iraq would almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence and further deterioration of conditions, leading to a number of the adverse consequences outlined above. The near-term results would be a significant power vacuum, greater human suffering, regional destabilization, and a threat to the global economy. Al Qaeda would depict our withdrawal as a historic victory. If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range consequences could eventually require the United States to return."

-- The Iraq Study Group

These individuals are:

James A. Baker, III, and Lee H. Hamilton, Co-Chairs

Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Vernon E. Jordon, Jr., Edwin Meese III, Sandra Day O'Connor, Leon E. Panetta, William J. Perry, Charles S. Robb, Alan K. Simpson

I must have missed where thesewere members of the Bush Administration, trying to promulgate a fantasy. Former Democratic Representative Hamilton certianly would be surprised to hear that. Sou would former Pres. Clinton Attorney Vernon Jordan, former Pres. Clinton Advisor Leon Panetta, Former Democratic Cabinet Secretary William Perry, and Former Democratic Representative Charles Robb.

The paranoid withdrawal fantasy
Current Opinion - Salon

Dear Camille:

To end the Vietnam War fiasco, the U.S. did exactly what you are calling for in this Iraq fiasco: Get out now! We did get out in Nam and immediately, and nearly 3 million innocent souls were slaughtered by Pol Pot.

Question: Are you not even a bit concerned that another "killing fields" situation will occur, as will surely come to pass this time in much larger numbers?

Frank Baldino
New Haven, Conn.

[Camile P.] Withdrawing U.S. troops and equipment from Iraq will be a complicated and dangerous process that will take many months. But it should be launched on a massive scale immediately. Iraq's fate needs to be decided Iraqis, whose quarreling ancient tribes and factions have little motivation to compromise as long as the U.S. military is planted there to keep the peace. A democratic Iraq would be desirable in the best of all possible worlds, but it may be a desert mirage -- not worth the loss of thousands of American lives or the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars desperately needed for U.S. social services and infrastructure.

If there are parallels between Camldia in the 1970s and Iraq now (as President Bush asserted to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August), they simply prove the folly of current U.S. policy in the Middle East. We will never know how many horrific deaths can be traced to the ruthless dictator Pol Pot (it could have been half the number you cite), but they were not always due to "slaughter" per se. Hundreds of thousands of peasants died from starvation and untreated illness in Pol Pot's madly unrealistic plan to turn Cambodia virtually overnight into an agrarian communist utopia.