When Obama consults with the commanders
...There are also logistical problems with removing equipment in the time frame Obama is pushing.We spent a day with Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond in Sadr City. He is the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which is responsible for Baghdad. Hammond will likely be one of the commanders who briefs Barack Obama when he visits Iraq.
"We still have a ways to go. Number one, we're working on security and it's very encouraging, that's true, but what we're really trying to achieve here is sustainable security on Iraqi terms. So, I think my first response to that would be let's look at the conditions.
"Instead of any time-based approach to any decision for withdrawal, it's got to be conditions-based, with the starting point being an intelligence analysis of what might be here today, and what might lie ahead in the future. I still think we still have work that remains to be done before I can really answer that question," Hammond said when asked how he would feel about an order to start drawing down two combat brigades a month. (Emphasis added.)
Asked if he considered it dangerous to pull out if the withdrawal is not based on "conditions," Hammond said, "It's very dangerous. I'll speak for the coalition forces, men and women of character and moral courage; we have a mission, and it's not until the mission is done that I can look my leader in the eye and say, 'Sir, Ma'am, mission accomplished,' and I think it is dangerous to leave anything a little early."
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"If we pull out of here too early, it's going to establish a vacuum of power that violent criminal groups will be able to fill once we leave," West said.
Capt. Jeremy Ussery, a West Point graduate on his third deployment, pointed to his heavy body armor as we walked in the 120-degree heat, saying, "The same people keep coming back because we want to see Iraq succeed, that's what we want. I don't want my kids, that hopefully will join the military, my notional children, to have to come back to Iraq 30 years from now and wear this."
But Ussery added, "You can't put a timetable on it -- it's events-based."
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The fact is that Democrats do not understand the military and warfare and that is evident by their unrealistic policy positions. Any sane approach to withdrawing from Iraq should be conditioned based as Maj.Gen. Hammond says. Timetables unrelated to events on the ground are a recipe for a military disaster.
Like the subject of energy, the Democrats have a real intelligence gap in their thinking and policies. It is something that the GOP should be exploiting.
Austin Bay has more on the logistic problems with Obama's plan.
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