Iraq - Withdrawal from Iraq ? Here Is the Timetable

And it's been there since the beginning.

Those Democrat politicians in Washington, who had backed the war with as much enthusiasm as George W Bush, are now using the issue of withdrawal as a means of distancing themselves from their initial positions. The Arab reactionaries who shuddered at the thought of a despot being toppled by foreign intervention are now clinging to the withdrawal slogan in the hope of sabotaging the process of democratisation in Iraq. In Europe, professional anti-Americans of all ilks are trying to cover their political nakedness with the “ withdrawal” fig leaf.

The truth, however, is that a timetable has been in place from the first day of the war that ended the Ba’athist tyranny in 2003. In that timetable the coalition’s military presence in Iraq is, as it should be, linked to the programme for the nation’s political reconstruction. In other words the coalition forces are in Iraq to accomplish a precise political task and not to provide the United States or any other foreign power with a forward base in the Middle East.

The grand goal of that task was to take power way from a small clique ld by Saddam Hussein had hand it back to the people of Iraq. The idea was not to impose democracy on Iraq, as some anti-liberation circles claim. The idea was to remove impediments to the democratisation of Iraq. Today the Iraqis are not forced to create a democracy. But they have a chance to do so, if they so wish. The task of the coalition was to provide them wit that chance. And in that sense the Iraq project has been a tremendous success.

Yes it has.
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