Faye's Core Issues
ENDING THE IRAQ OCCUPATION
News that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program years ago has President Bush on the defensive—scrambling to explain why he misled the nation and saber-rattled against Iran. But instead of changing course, Bush is recklessly continuing his march to war.
It’s a repeat of what happened leading up to the war in Iraq.
As a member of congress I will take my responsibility serious to prevent this nation from getting involved in another pre-emptive war.
The Iraq Occupation has done serious damage to our moral authority in the world, and our troops should not be kept in harms way in the midst of an ongoing civil war. Already almost 4,000 troops have lost their lives, and that number keeps increasing by an average of 100 young American lives lost each month while the occupation continues.
The only way to get the political powers in Iraq and the Middle East region involved in efforts to stabilize the situation in Iraq is to start the troop withdrawal process immediately. I do not support additional funding for the Iraq occupation effort, without a set timeline for withdrawal.
As far back as June 2006, Bush’s own General George Casey called for a troop withdrawal to about one third of current levels to be completed in about a year.
Prior to that in February of 2006, a Zogby survey showed that an overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately.
And recently, Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon told The Associated Press in June of 2007 in a telephone interview from his headquarters at Camp Speicher, near the city of Tikrit, that Troop withdrawal “puts the Iraqi central government in a position of having to assume responsibility for the security situation."
We have given the Iraqi government ample time to get their affairs in order, yet according to a Government Accountability Office report in September of 2007, they have only met 3 of 18 benchmarks set. The current Iraq policy is a failure, and only troop withdrawal can force the Iraq government to find a political solution to their current civil war.
In their 2006 book titled Out Of Iraq, former senator George McGovern and William R. Polk, a leading authority on the Middle East, offer a detailed and practical plan for a speedy troop withdrawal from Iraq.
A safe withdrawal can be completed in one year, and free up $12 billion per month for use in other national security programs like efforts to check cargo containers coming into our nation’s ports, and a host of domestic issues that need our attention.