Get Your Blog Up

“This administration is populated by people who’ve spent their careers bashing government. They’re not just small-government conservatives—they’re Grover Norquist, strangle-it-in-the-bathtub conservatives. It’s a cognitive disconnect for them to be able to do something well in an arena that they have so derided and reviled all these years.”

Senator Hillary Clinton

Monday, May 24, 2004

Maybe he can address this tonight, too?

The speech. Four hours to the speech. Maybe I'm too excited about the whole thing. After months of soundbites and campaign stumps, I really want to hear prepared remarks by this guy directed to me. And Iraq.
A recent opinion poll showed only seven percent of Iraqis still view U.S. troops as liberators. More than 40 percent said they would feel safer if U.S. forces left now.

"They will give us a president like Yasser Arafat, a president in name but with no power," said Hussein Ibrahim, 22, a Baghdad university student.

"After a year's experience, people know where power lies," said Iraq analyst Mustafa Alani. "If the new 'sovereign' entity does not have the authority to protect its citizens from U.S. arrest, it will have no credibility in the eyes of Iraqis."

And while they get a both a president and a prime minister, the troops stay. Indefinitely.
But the draft U.N. Security Council resolution, which asks for backing of a U.S.-led multinational force, has no date for the withdrawal of foreign troops. It is also silent on the future of U.S. prisons, Iraqi control over its own forces and a transitional constitution adopted in March.

So imagine we win the Revolutionary War, and the French decide they are going to keep their forces on our soil until they think we are ready to go it alone. Not only that, but they have permission to "take all measures" if things get out of control. How happy would we have been?