Paul Bremer, administrator of Iraq, May 14, 2004:
"If the provisional government asks us to leave we will leave," Bremer said, referring to an Iraqi administration due to take power June 30. "I don't think that will happen, but obviously we don't stay in countries where we're not welcome."
Iraqi leaders, November 21, 2005:
Iraqi leaders, meeting at a reconciliation conference in Cairo, urged an end to violence in the country and demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq.
In a final statement, read by Arab League chief Amre Moussa, host of the three-day summit, they called for ``the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces.'' No date was specified.
:
Vice President Dick Cheney said the administration won't set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and that nation's forces are making progress toward securing the country on their own.
``A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory for the terrorists, an invitation to further violence against free nations and a terrible blow for the future security of the U.S.,'' the vice president said in a speech today at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, a policy research group that generally supports the Bush administration.
The "spreading freedom" lie is just as bad as the WMD lie. If the Bush administration was seriously interested in Iraqi democracy, they would accept the will of Iraqi leaders and help set a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq. However, they are ignoring those pleas, just as they ignored pleas from the intelligence community about the shoddy WMD intelligence. That they don't actually care what Iraqis think of the American-led occupation shows once again just how elective this war actually was and still is. It shows how, more than anything else, invading and occupying Iraq was simply a pet project of neo-conservatives from long before Bush came into office or the attacks of September 11th, 2001. They just wanted this war, period. They want to keep continuing it, period. They really don't seem to care what happens, as long as they get to keep fighting it. The only real Bush administration justification for war in Iraq is that they just want to do it. WMD's, democracy, and mounting human costs don't matter. They want this war. If peopel keep voting for Bush supporters, this war is what they will continue to get.
