THE CATO INSTITUTE BAILS ON FREDO'S WAR

From the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1/11/07.

Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq
Ted Galen Carpenter
Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies
Cato Institute
January 11, 2007
Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

(Excerpts)

...proponents of the war refuse to admit what is becoming increasingly obvious: Washington’s Iraq occupation and democratization mission is failing, and there is little realistic prospect that its fortunes will improve.

The bottom line is that the United States is mired in a country that is already in the early stages of an exceedingly complex, multi-sided civil war, and where all significant factions save one (the Kurds) want American troops to leave. That is an untenable situation.

Increasing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by 20,000 or so is a futile attempt to salvage a mission that has gone terribly wrong.

The United States needs to adopt a withdrawal strategy measured in months, not years. Indeed, the president should begin the process of removing American troops immediately, and that process needs to be complete in no more than six months.