Tommy,
I might not have made myself clear in my last blog. The Iraqi people were grateful when we came in and ended Hussein's rule. However, that was 5 years ago. Now, I want you to just imagine how the Iraqis feel about having another country's military force in their country for 5 years. While terrorists are coming and attacking our troops, who do you think are in the background? The people. Even though more than 4000 of our troops have died, have you considered how many people where caught in the middle of the fighting and the suicide bombings? Second, the U.S. has spent about 700 billion dollars on the war in Iraq. Here is a
article that describes what 700 billion dollars can be used for.
Kia,
Obama plans to remove the troops in a 16-month period. However, he wants to have a small faction of our troops to remain, in order to continue fighting terrorists, aid the Iraqi government, and train the Iraqi forces . However, he does not want to build a permanent base in Iraq.
Merritt,
As it stands now, we simply can't cut the funds of our forces in Iraq. Cutting funds would mean a serious evacuation and we just can't do that due to the status of the Iraqi government and its forces. By now, it is already too late to abandon Iraq. Iraq has ultimately changed from the inside out. There is no doubt that Iraq can be very valuable in our War on Terrorism due to its oil, location of the country in general, and the fact that it is right next to Iran. I feel that we need to focus more on capturing Bin Laden, since we started this war in order to stop him.
Grace,
I feel that our withdrawal is necessary but not a full withdrawal. I feel that we need to cut down our forces in Iraq in order to cut down on the cost of the war. As I have stated above, we simply cannot leave Iraq in the state that is in. However, we can decrease the number of forces we have there.
Last night was the second Presidential Debate between Obama and McCain. For the people who have missed it, I suggest you watch it ASAP. I felt the main focal point was our economic situation, due to the effects of the Rescue Bill the last couple of days. Still the candidates were able to talk about about other major issues, including the war on Iraq. McCain strongly supports going into Iraq and states that Iraq will be a great ally in the Middle East. As you can see on this
map, Iraq is in the middle of the Middle East. To have Iraq as an ally would allow us to keep tabs on the surrounding countries, especially Iran. McCain felt that our troops were doing an excellent job and stresses on bringing the troops back home. Obama opposes the war in Iraq. He mentions how the war in Iraq drew away from us stopping Al-Qaeda. He feels that Iraq took too many soldiers from Afghanistan and used up a lot of our federal budget which was widely spread out and still is. We hear more about Iraq then we do about Afghanistan. Yet, we have soldiers still looking for Bin Laden in Afghanistan, even though their numbers are much lower than when the War on Terrorism began. However, if you confused about what I am saying, this
video on a part of the Presidential Debate will help.