Retired generals make the case for withdrawal from Iraq

U.S. must leave Iraq, retired generals say

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Apr 4, 2008 12:45:38 EDT

Setting a withdrawal timetable from Iraq might be a shaky strategic 
move, but it would provide a morale boost for service members and their 
families, a former Army War College commandant said Wednesday.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales Jr., testifying before the Senate 
Foreign Affairs Committee about U.S. military strategy in Iraq, said he 
has no doubt that a major withdrawal of combat forces is coming because 
the U.S. has “run out of military options” and cannot indefinitely 
sustain troop levels.

“Regardless of who wins the election and regardless of conditions on the 
ground, by summer the troops will begin to come home,” said Scales, who 
headed the war college in 1997. “The only point of contention is how 
precipitous will be the withdrawal and whether the schedule of 
withdrawal should be a matter of administration policy.”

[...]

Scales testified along with two other retired Army generals, Gen. Barry 
McCaffrey and Lt. Gen. William Odom, who also agreed a withdrawal of 
U.S. combat troops early in the next president’s administration is 
inevitable.

“We face a deteriorating political situation with an over-extended 
Army,” said Odom, who served as director of the National Security Agency 
in the Reagan administration.

“The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order,” 
Odom said. “Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping U.S. 
strategy in the region.”

McCaffrey, a former chief of U.S. Southern Command and commander of the 
24th Infantry Division in the 1991 Gulf War, predicted a withdrawal of 
U.S. forces within three years or less because there is “no U.S. 
political will to continue” and because allies “have abandoned us.”

“It is over,” McCaffrey said.


http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/military_iraqwithdrawal_040208w/



These men know what they're talking about.  The PR flacks in the Bush 
administration do not.