We Can’t Get Out Of Iraq Fast Enough

We’re still there, and we’re not leaving fast enough.  During the campaign Obama said he’d get combat troops out in 16 months. That’s been upped a few months as a compromise with the generals on the ground.  But no matter how long we stay, we’re never going to create the democracy BushCo thought it could.  And now, more tragedy in a country we’ll never be able to control.

At least 75 people were killed and 120 injured in two Thursday explosions.

In the first attack, a woman wearing a suicide belt exploded herself in the Karada district of Baghdad as dozens of people lined up at a food giveaway, killing 28, including 12 police officers, and injuring 50, according to an official with the Interior Ministry.

In the second attack, in Muqdadiya in Diyala Province, a bomb went off inside a restaurant where a group of Iranian tourists were eating lunch, killing 47 and injuring 70, according to police officials.

The Baghdad attack occurred as the Red Cross was distributing food. The second one targeted Iranian tourists. Five US soldiers were killed in Mosul earlier in the month by a suicide truck bomber.  Two days ago a suicide bomber killed five and wounded 15 in a mosque.

Since every Republican running for office loves to invoke the memory of Ronald Reagan, let us remember what happened after 241 Marines were killed in Lebanon in October 1983.  President Reagan eventually realized we didn’t belong there.  Here is what he said about the Lebanon debacle:

“Perhaps we didn’t appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and the complexity of the problems that make the Middle East such a jungle. Perhaps the idea of a suicide car bomber committing mass murder to gain instant entry to Paradise was so foreign to our own values and consciousness that it did not create in us the concern for the Marines’ safety that it should have. Perhaps we should have anticipated that members of the Lebanese military whom we were trying to assist would simply lay down their arms and refuse to fight their own countrymen. In any case, the sending of the Marines to Beirut was the source of my greatest regret and my greatest sorrow as president.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.