[Vision2020] Rumsfeld: Leaving Iraq Like Giving Nazis Germany

[Tom Hansen]

>From Reuters at:

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-0
3-19T134938Z_01_N19209143_RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAQ-RUMSFELD.xml

If you look real close, you can almost watch Rumsfeld's nose grow with each
statement he makes.

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Rumsfeld - leaving Iraq like giving Nazis Germany
Sun Mar 19, 2006 1:50 PM GMT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leaving Iraq now would be like handing postwar
Germany back to the Nazis, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a
column published on Sunday, the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq
war.

"Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of
handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis," he wrote in an essay in The
Washington Post.

Rumsfeld said "the terrorists" were trying to fuel sectarian tensions to
spark a civil war, but they must be "watching with fear" the progress in the
country over the past three years.

In London, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on Sunday that Iraq
is in a civil war and is nearing the point of no return when the sectarian
violence will spill over throughout the Middle East.

"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day, as an
average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not
civil war, then God knows what civil war is," he told BBC television.

Rumsfeld's view was that the Iraqi insurgency was failing.

"The terrorists seem to recognise that they are losing in Iraq. I believe
that history will show that to be the case," he wrote.

He said 75 percent of all military operations in Iraq include Iraqi security
forces.

"Today, some 100 Iraqi army battalions of several hundred troops each are in
the fight, and 49 percent control their own battle space," Rumsfeld wrote.

Thousands of anti-war protesters gathered in cities around the world for
demonstrations on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq.

Doubts about the Iraq war have helped drive down President George W. Bush's
approval ratings to their lowest level.

In a Newsweek poll released on Saturday, only 36 percent of Americans said
they approved of his performance as president. Sixty-five percent disapprove
of his handling of the situation in Iraq, once one of his strongest suits.

Bush used his weekly radio address on Saturday to urge Americans to resist a
temptation to retreat from Iraq, but opposition Democrats pressed him to
offer a plan for drawing down U.S. troops and said Iraq was moving closer to
a civil war.

Rumsfeld wrote that if U.S. forces leave Iraq now, "there is every reason to
believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill the vacuum -- and the free world
might not have the will to face them again."

A recent Le Moyne College/Zogby poll showed 72 percent of U.S. troops
serving in Iraq think that the United States should exit within a year.
Nearly one in four said the troops should leave immediately.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


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"In America, anybody can become president.  
That's one of the risks you take . . ."

- Adlai Stevenson

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