For those who voted for Democrats because you were tired of the war, evidently, you aren’t going to get what you voted for:
President Jalal Talabani said Thursday that he had been assured by Democrat congressional leaders during a recent visit to Washington that they had no plans for a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces.
Talabani, a Kurd whose post is ceremonial, said Democrats also backed the idea of placing U.S. troops in bases while putting Iraqis in charge of security in and around cities.
“They all told me that they want the success of Iraq’s democratically elected government and continued support for the Iraqi people to defeat terrorism,” Talabani said about his trip to the United States in late September as many were predicting the Democratic congressional triumph in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
“One of them (a Democrat leader) told me that any early withdrawal will be a catastrophe for the United States and the world,” Talabani, speaking from his northern hometown of Sulaimaniyah, told the Dubai-based Al-Jazeera satellite broadcaster.
Asked whether the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld meant a collapse of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq, Talabani said, “I know George Bush as a clear and strong man who does not bow down to blackmail.”
And for those of you that don’t think we are fighting the war on terror in Iraq (like our new Glorious Leader Speaker) there’s this:
He said thousands of non-Iraqi fighters had been killed. Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, recently acknowledged that more than 4,000 fighters from his group have been killed.
“We are being subjected to a foreign invasion, and we don’t have enough forces to fight this invasion,” Talabani said, suggesting that U.S. troops need to stay.
The Iraqi government and U.S. officials accuse Syria of allowing foreign fighters to cross into Iraq, a claim that Iraq’s western neighbor denies, claiming it is impossible to control the long desert border.
“All Arab countries have terrorists in our country, hundreds each, and also there are others from Muslim countries too,” Talabani said.
He added that “200 fighters used to enter the country every day and now it is about 30 a day.”
If we weren’t fighting Al-Qaida in Iraq, we would be fighting them in Afghanistan. The war on terror is in Iraq, Afghanistan, Britain, Germany, France (though they don’t seem to realize it), Indonesia and all around the world.
So, let’s recap, Pelosi and Dean have both said that the Democrats are not going to impeach the president and the Democrats are assuring everyone that they’re not pulling out of Iraq. Pretty much what we had before the election. So what did you get? Higher taxes and higher minimum wage, that looks about it. Oh, and amnesty for illegal aliens.
Now, there is hope for you because Democrats have been known to lie and they could be telling everyone that they aren’t going to do these things but when they get into office, they may start impeachment proceedings and vote to defund the war. And they may bow to the pressure of the netroots to do it. I don’t believe they are going to do nothing while the Congress does nothing to end the war and remove Bush from office. It should get really interesting in the next couple of months.
(Link via Drudge Report)