Why should we leave Iraq?

Anybody who has read anything I have posted here about government knows that there is a word that is very important to me - precedent.

A couple quick definitions of the word:

1. An example that is used to justify similar occurrences at a later time.

2. Precedent is the principle in law of using the past in order to assist in current interpretation and decision-making.

In government future administrations will always look at the actions of past administrations to make a determination on what they may be able to do in any given situation. The Bush Administration has set a lot of bad examples that should be investigated and prosecuted when the circumstance allows. This is not just a partisan statement but one based on the idea that we need to hold ALL public officials accountable for their actions. If we fail to do this we will fail to have any sort of democracy in this country. Many of the precedents that the Bush Administration already set have been purposely designed to eat away at a democratic approach to government and to allow the concentration of power in the Executive Branch with a small circle of individuals. We have allowed this to happen as a nation as a response to the attack of September 11, 2001 with the stated goal of combating terrorism. I begin with this introduction because I think it needs to be stated before I get to my first reason for leaving Iraq.

I should say here also that many people on both sides of the aisle feel that our presence in Iraq became an illegal action the moment we admitted that there were no WMD in Iraq and we ended our search for them. This was our primary purpose for - and here I go with that important word - setting a precedent for our country by attacking a country that had not attacked us or our allies. We instigated a war, not something any patriotic American should be able to stomach and that we certainly should not condone. Some 35,000 Iraqis died last year in this war. By some counts the total number of Iraqi dead or injured in this war stands between 600,000 and 650,000. These are not numbers anybody will want to discuss and great effort has been made to make it difficult to track these numbers. To put this in terms that hit a little closer to home for you, the population of Portland, Maine is 64,000. I wonder if you would still be living in Maine if more than half the people in Portland were killed last year. The total population of the state of Maine is about 1,275,000. Imagine half of them getting killed or injured since 2003. The number of American troops killed in this war is much smaller hovering around 3300. As of October of 2006 the number of wounded and injured soldiers in Iraq was over 20,000. I think these are all important numbers to consider when we discuss how we should proceed in Iraq.

Our goals for going to Iraq have been met. Saddam is gone and there are no WMD. Our government did not tell the American people that the reason we were going to attack Iraq is because we wanted to build a democracy there. The reason they did not use this as a reason to attack them is because nobody would have supported that and there would have been far too many people coming forward to point out exactly how dumb an idea that was.

It is well documented now that President Bush called a meeting in November of 2003 to inform members of the administration that they did not want anybody using the word "insurgency" to describe what was going on in Iraq because the CIA had informed them that was exactly what was taking place. The reason they did not like the term insurgents is because it denotes that our armed forces are fighting Iraqis that want us to leave Iraq and we were not supposed to be at war with the Iraqi people. In fact we are not at war with Iraq so the rules that govern our military presence there need to be taken into account.

Our troops in Iraq are being used as a maintenance crew at this point and that is not why they should be there. They are also being used as targets and decoys and these are also not good reasons for them to be there. You won't hear it from any politician on the left or right but the primary reason they are there at this point is to make Iraq safer for corporate interests - specifically Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other industry giants. Big Oil is about to move into Iraq and this is the real reason for the Bush "Surge." It has nothing to do with making Iraqis safer or winning a war. We have already won the war in terms of what Bushco wanted to accomplish there. Our government is not at all concerned with a genocide. The intent of the Bush Administration was always to generate profits and make Iraq safe for the companies I listed above. If we continue to fund this war we are funding Big Oil to use our armed forces as a private security force to increase their profits. I should point out our armed forces are the "targets" in this plan and are left exposed and out in the open to draw fire and focus combat where they are so that Big Oil can put their private security forces to work around the oil fields and start pumping out the profits. Is this how we want to spend taxpayer money and the lives of our troops?