Dear Senator Reid:
How do you as an experienced political figure justify making a statement that you must know will only get torqued and twisted by the corporate media omitting the "qualifier", leading many Democrats to be even angrier toward you and other Democratic leaders. (This isn’t a question, or if it is, it’s purely rhetorical, so I’ve skipped the indicated punctuation mark.)
It is reported as of yesterday [Harry Reid: Brief troop surge OK in Iraq]
that you would support a temporary troop increase, qualifying it as "only if it were part of broader strategy to bring combat forces home by early 2008." A big thanks to Ted Kennedy for openly refusing to support you in this.
Retired Gen. Jack Keane having said it will take at least one and a half years to secure Iraq, I assume that you will stand by the following statement you are quoted in the above article as having made:
"If the commanders on the ground said this is just for a short period of time, we'll go along with that," said Reid, D-Nev., citing a time frame such as two months to three months. But a period longer than that, such as 18 months to 24 months, would be unacceptable, he said.
In recent elections, few areas of this great country have voted more reliably and heavily Democratic than California’s North Coast. Most of us are way ahead of the curve when it comes to getting out of Iraq. And a lot of us are perhaps a bit too quick to anger against our Democratic leaders when we think they’re failing us (as those elected Democrats often enough have when it comes to kowtowing to Republicans since Bush got himself appointed by the Supreme Court).
So I’m asking you now to stop the qualifiers. The answer is OUT OF IRAQ NOW.
Your statement of 2 to 3 months, but not 18 to 24 months cannot find a home in the minds of Democrats who voted in great numbers to get us out of Iraq. And yeah, we know, Gen. Jack Keane even is quoted in the article as saying your timeframe is impossible, and yeah, we know that any normal clear-thinking individual could infer that you'd thrown the Republicans an impossibility to chew on. Well, the pundits of the corporate media are not normal clear-thinking individuals and will huff and tut-tut at your leadership ability rather than acknowledge the fact you'd merely thrown them a dry bone. And those over-paid, fact-impaired pundits stand a good chance of poisoning the minds of politically unsophisticated Democratic voters within earshot against you and Democrats in Congress generally.
Tell the Republicans the truth: DEMOCRATS STAND AGAINST ESCALATION OF THE WAR
And that so-called "surge" is exactly what that is: escalation.
And tell them this other truth: DEMOCRATS STAND FOR GETTING OUT OF IRAQ. NOW.
Don’t leave us open to sending more troops into Iraq only to get them stuck there, which is exactly what our poor excuse of a commander in chief and his cowardly States-side Pentagoners will do.
Shaking hands with Republicans these days is like shaking hands with an octopus, you grab hold of one amicably enough, and suddenly the other seven tentacles have got hold of you to drag you down.
Don’t shake hands with an octopus. Cut ‘em off. Cut ‘em all off.
Give ‘em hell, Harry. Tell Republicans, "Out of Iraq, NOW!"
We’ve got your back on this.
A constituent from Northern California