Now is the time to pull troops out of Iraq

It is time for Congress to stop procrastinating about Iraq. Urge our congressional representatives to sign on to a bipartisan resolution, the Homeward Bound Act, calling for usurper Bush to come up with a plan by the end of this year to withdraw the troops from Iraq, and for the withdrawal to start no later than October 2006. The binding resolution is being sponsored by Reps. Walter B. Jones Jr., R-N.C., Ron Paul, R-Texas, Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii.

We do not want this war and occupation to drag on endlessly like the Vietnam War, which lasted 17 years. American public opinion turned against the Vietnam War in 1968 and yet the war went on for seven more years during which most of the fatalities and casualties occurred. There were always new promises of "light at the end of the tunnel." Elections were held in 1967 in South Vietnam with 80 percent participation, yet the regime was defeated nonetheless. Chicken Little forebodings of the world going Communist should we lose in Vietnam — the infamous Domino Theory — did not come true.

The Vietnam War only ended after Congress voted to cut off funds. Our troops should not have to pay for the maliciousness and bungling of high government officials.

President Jimmy Carter provoked the December 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan by giving military assistance to the Mujahedeen in a directive signed July 3, 1979. This is documented in former CIA Director Robert Gates’s memoirs and in a French magazine (Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998) interview with Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. This triggered the whole sad chain of events in Afghanistan. Yet gullible liberals are still suckered by Carter’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize!

On the eve of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie had a fateful conversation with Saddam Hussein. She gave a clear, diplomatic signal for Iraq to invade, saying: "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."

Bald-faced lies have been used in the hate campaign against Saddam Hussein. Gassing the Kurds was done with cyanide-based gas that Iran, but not Iraq, had at the time. This was explained in New York Times Op-Ed article (January 21, 2003) by Stephen C. Pelletiere, senior CIA political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.

Jim Senyszyn

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