It could take how long, Don?

"Anyone who tries to estimate the end, the time, the cost or the casualties in a war is making a big mistake."
– Donald Rumsfeld, 6/27/05

"It [the war in Iraq] could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
– Donald Rumsfeld, 3/7/03


More than 1,720 U.S. soldiers have been killed and 40,000 permanently injured in Iraq. I've seen two men in my town who are now home from the war as amputees.

In Iraq, 100,000 Iraqis have died and virtually everyone in Iraq has lost a friend or relative.

Instead of looking for an exit strategy - since we know our presence incites insurgents to attack their own people in order to chase us out - we are building bases and settling in for an endless war. Instead of calling a cease fire, Donald Rumsfeld has admitted he negotiates with insurgent groups as soldiers die.

The reason for staying in the war is clearly to justify the deaths of those who have already died. But Mr. Rumsfeld - if I understood him correctly - is now saying this war could take a dozen years.

His "six weeks" war turned into over two years. Now he's saying it will be a dozen years. Perhaps he plans no end at all.

After all, if these neo-cons with their ideas of "creative destruction" have to pull out, the world will see the absolute folly of their beliefs - and this disastrous foreign policy that has been built upon them - and Republicans will be turned out of office.

So, to help Republicans remain in office, Bush is insisting we will remain in Iraq - now for an initial estimate of twelve more years.

This means an entire generation of Americans will be killed or crippled by this war.

It makes no sense to justify the loss of 1720 men and women through the deaths and disfigurement of an entire generation of our sons and daughters.

This war was lost when Donald Rumsfeld told the Pentagon to ignore the State Department report that predicted the disaster we have and gave strategies for avoiding it.

Donald Rumsfeld's failed experiment has gone far enough and far too many have suffered already.

I am not alone in this view. In the poll conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News, more than 40% of those polled said the war in Iraq was becoming analogous to the war in Vietnam.

It's time for an exit strategy.

Write to your Congressional representatives and tell them to support H.J.RES.55, the new bipartisan resolution calling for the Bush administration to announce a plan by the end of the year for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq - and to initiate the plan as soon as possible.