U.S. Troops: Get Out of Iraq Within a Year
An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops
serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year,
and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne
College/Zogby International survey shows.(snip)
Different branches had quite different sentiments on
the question, the poll shows. While 89% of reserves and 82% of those in the
National Guard said the U.S. should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines
think so. Seven in ten of those in the regular Army thought the U.S. should
leave Iraq in the next year. Moreover, about three-quarters of those in National
Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within six months, just 15% of Marines
felt that way. About half of those in the regular Army favored withdrawal
from Iraq in the next six months.
John
Zogby (ht HuffingtonPost)
Our troops are clearly confused about the mission in Iraq, according
to Zogby's poll, with 58% believing the mission is clear in their minds, while
42% said it was somewhat clear or very unclear. The next piece of information
is depressing in the extreme.
While 85% said the U.S. mission
is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,”
77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to
stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”
It is very disturbing to me that a large majority of our troops
have a wholly false reasoning for the mission in Iraq. Of course, we don't have
to ask why, now do we?
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, with the help of Donald Rumsfeld
and Condoleezza Rice helped brain wash our troops to believe that Saddam's role
in 9/11 is the main crux of our mission in Iraq, with Saddam's links to al Qaeda
another prime motivator. Nothing I have read so far about our troops infuriates
me more than this part of Zogby's poll.
WMDs have gone into the desert sand, with 68% believing they went
in to get rid of Saddam, the above rationales obviously motivators in the mission.
No president should send troops into battle to fight and die for
a false mission. The Iraq mission is a failure to date because President Bush is incompetent as commander in chief, which has been proven over months and years of horrifying leadership vacuum. That our troops thought they were to get rid of Saddam because of a link to 9/11 or al Qaeda is grounds to root President Bush as one of the most deceitful commander in chiefs we have ever had in our country's history.
Almost half, 45%, of the troops are on their 2nd rotation, with
29% on their second third tour or more, 26% on their first.
As for the recent violence, what I called the
insurgents' Tet Offensive, a Washington Post colleague of the reporter on the story, whose name I didn't
catch, said on MSNBC much earlier today that the 1,300
dead tally was gotten from the morgue and by talking with people first hand. The picture
in Iraq is as grim as it gets. The majority of the troops want out within one year. We should help make that happen.
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