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Joseph Galloway says get out of Iraq now
Joe Galloway is now retired as a military correspondent but he apparently still cranks out a few columns for what once was Knight Ridder.
In the following, he writes what some high-level network media 'star' needs to say out loud on television. Who is going to be the first? Is it Couric, Williams or Gibson? As much as Keith Olbermann's straightforwardness has been a breath of fresh air, MSNBC doesn't measure up to the Big Three. Lyndon Johnson knew the jig was up when Walter Cronkite, upon returning from Vietnam, editorialized at the conclusion of his February 27, 1968 broadcast. Cronkite said: "For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."
LBJ was quoted afterwards as saying. "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."
Go here to read Cronkite's complete editorial. Here's Galloway:
Leave Iraq now; don't wait until 2008 election dayGo here to read Galloway's entire column.
By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
McClatchy Newspapers
December 7, 2006
After nearly four years of living in what can be charitably described as a state of denial, everyone in Washington, from President Bush to the Baker Commission to incoming defense secretary Robert Gates, to outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to the study group assembled by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has finally admitted that pretty much nothing is going right in Iraq.
Duh.
Our president, who froze the whole process of planning and fighting a war by declaring that he was "staying the course" even when the course was obviously wrong, finally abandoned those words, if not his dogged pursuit of "victory"... i
The Baker Commission issued its report - which primarily recommended that we begin talking with Iraq's friends and enemies next door and Iraqi-izing the war by handing things over to Iraqi forces...
...All things considered, it was too little, too late and too long a wait if you have a son or daughter serving a third or fourth combat tour in Iraq - something that few, if any, of the above referenced politicians and wise men have contributed to the war effort...
...This week, the American military death toll in Iraq crossed the 2,900 mark, with well over 20,000 wounded.
All the politicians paid the customary lip service in praising the troops and commending them for the terrible sacrifices they must continue to endure while the wrangling and dithering over a futile war goes on with no end in sight.
How can they look at themselves in the mirror every morning?
...There's no victory waiting for President Bush in Iraq, and nothing that his father's friends say or do can save him from an ignominious end to his presidency in two years and two months, or from the judgment of history.
...What we need to do is what none of the commissions and their reports dared to suggest: Begin withdrawing American forces from Iraq right now. Not in 2008. Not after the American death toll has crossed 5,000. Not just in time for a presidential election.
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