House Resolution Urging Withdrawal of Troops from Iraq
to be Introduced Today
Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C.
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Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Resolution Urging Withdrawal of U.S. Troops
from Iraq Set to Be Introduced in House of
Representatives Today
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) plans to introduce a
congressional resolution
today in the U.S. House of Representatives calling
on President Bush
to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops
from Iraq.
Woolsey, who is in her seventh term in the House,
told the Institute
for Public Accuracy: "Removing some 130,000
soldiers from Iraq
immediately is not logistically feasible, but we must
take the first
steps. We should not abandon Iraq; there is still a
critical role for
the United States in providing the development aid
that can help
create a civil society, support education and
rebuild Iraq's economic
infrastructure. But the military option is clearly not
working. It is
truly time to support the troops, by bringing them
home as soon as
realistically possible."
MICHAEL HOFFMAN, iraqvet@mail.com,
http://www.ivaw.net
Co-founder and national coordinator of Iraq
Veterans Against the
War,
Hoffman said today: "It's good to see this brought
up in official
legislation. Many say it's a disservice to the troops
who have died to
withdraw from Iraq. But what's more of a disservice
-- learn from your
mistakes or continue to throw lives away? The
occupation is the
biggest obstacle to Iraq's rebuilding. As long as the
Iraqis are
occupied, few are going to work along with the
U.S. forces, and those
that do will be seen as collaborators. We should
not cut and run, we
should leave militarily. We still owe it to the Iraqis
to help them
rebuild, but the military is not equipped to do that.
And we should
hold ourselves to leaving now and not drag it out
citing logistics.
The administration is trying to have an Iraqi
government while
maintaining U.S. control. When I left Iraq in May
2003, they were
building permanent military bases."
MIKE GRAVEL, sengravel@ni4d.us,
http://www.ni4d.us
While in the U.S. Senate, Gravel entered the
Pentagon Papers into
the
Congressional Record. He said today: "Staying
increases the number of
American lives lost. The sooner we pull out, the
sooner the Iraqis can
really determine their own destiny. Staying doesn't
make us safer..."
Gravel is currently chairman of the Democracy
Foundation.
HOWARD ZINN, hzinn@bu.edu,
http://www.howardzinn.org,
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0122-01.htm
Zinn, a noted historian, is available for a limited
number of
interviews. He said today: "Our presence in Iraq is
a disaster for the
American people and an even bigger disaster for
the Iraqi people. Two
years into the U.S. escalation in Vietnam, in the
spring of 1967, a
book of mine was published called 'Vietnam: The
Logic of Withdrawal.'
It was the first book on the war to urge an
immediate departure from
Southeast Asia, and at that time I heard the same
arguments against
withdrawal that we are hearing now. The United
States did not pull out
its troops for six more years. In those years at least
a million more
Vietnamese were killed, and perhaps 30,000 U.S.
military. We must stay
in Iraq, it is said again and again, so that we can
bring stability
and democracy to that country. Isn't it clear that
after almost two
years of war and occupation we have brought only
chaos, violence, and
death to that country? Can democracy be nurtured
by destroying cities,
by bombing, by driving people from their homes?"
Zinn is the author of
"A People's History of the United States" and
"Terrorism and War."
FRANK BRODHEAD, FBrodhead@aol.com,
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7079
Brodhead is co-author (with Edward S. Herman)
of the book
"Demonstration Elections: U.S.-Staged Elections in
the Dominican
Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador" and wrote the
recent article
"Reframing the Iraq Election." He said today:
"When President Bush
refuses to discuss a timetable for U.S. withdrawal,
or links U.S.
withdrawal to political and security benchmarks
rather than to the
calendar, or when U.S. general Tommy Franks
states that U.S. troops
will be in Iraq for at least 10 years, we should
discard any
assumptions that the United States will leave Iraq
voluntarily unless
and until its economic and military goals are
secure. U.S. control of
Iraq would be a stupendous achievement for the
Bush administration and
will not be lightly abandoned."
MATT ROTHSCHILD, mattr@progressive.org,
http://www.progressive.org
Editor of the Progressive magazine, Rothschild
said today:
"There's no
way the United States can clean up the mess. The
pyromaniac doesn't
make a good firefighter, and Bush is a pyromaniac
here. There's been a
lot of talk about these elections being a turning
point, but there's
not going to be a turning point here. We have
always been told there's
a turning point. When Saddam's sons were killed,
that was a turning
point. When Saddam was caught, that was a
turning point. When Fallujah
was retaken, or Najaf, or when Bremer left, all
those were deemed
'turning points.' There's not going to be a turning
point until the
United States turns around and leaves."
For more information, contact at the Institute for
Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan,
(541) 484-9167
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