Kerry Calls For Iraqi "Deadline".

John Kerry has called on the Bush administration to set the Iraqi government a deadline to ensure US and UK troop withdrawal. And says that we should simply withdraw if the Iraqis fail to comply.

As our generals have said, the war cannot be won militarily. It must be won politically. No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences.

So far, Iraqi leaders have responded only to deadlines — a deadline to transfer authority to a provisional government, and a deadline to hold three elections.

Now we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get Iraq up on its own two feet.

Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military. If Iraqis aren't willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they're probably not willing to build one at all. The civil war will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave.

After three years of listening to Bush prattle on about "staying the course" and Rumsfeld's talk of "the long war" Americans will, hopefully, see this as what it is. It's called leadership. And it's what the US, under Bush's mismanagement, has been lacking.

Listening to Kerry on Iraq, it is impossible to imagine that he would have sat around for five days as New Orleans suffered.

Oh, what might have been...

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Tags: John Kerry, Iraq, Deadline, Calls for Deadline,