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Iraq: Now support by the troops is waning

Bob Herbert writing in the NY Times [and republished on Information Clearing House]:

"Saddam is dead. The weapons of mass destruction were a mirage. More than 3,000 American G.I.s and scores of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Voters in the United States have made it clear that they no longer support American involvement in this exercise in sustained barbarism. Incredibly, the U.S. military itself is turning against the war.

And yet the president, against the counsel of his commanders on the ground, apparently is ready to escalate - to send more American lives into the fire he set in Iraq.

In a devastating critique of the war, the newsweekly Army Times led its current edition with the headline: "About-Face on the War - After 3 years of support, troops sour on Iraq." The article detailed a Military Times Poll that found, for the first time, that "more troops disapprove of the president's handling of the war than approve of it."

Only a third of the service members surveyed approved of the president's conduct of the war, while 42 percent disapproved. Perhaps worse was the finding that only half of the troops believed that success in Iraq was likely."

How much more does George Bush need to hear from the wider electorate, his generals and the army before determining not to listen to Dick Cheney [clearly now bordering on being so very much out of touch as to have become even more dangerous than previously] and a few neo-con die-hards? - not to send in more troops into Iraq as is rumoured he will announce next week!

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