by James Glaser
June 22, 2005

There were only four members of Congress with enough courage to say we should at least start thinking of an exit plan for our troops in Iraq.

Two Republicans, Walter Jones of North Carolina and Ron Paul of Texas were joined by Democrats, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio in introducing a resolution to have the President start bringing home troops from Iraq by October 1, 2006.

Of course if we wait that long, we can all feel pretty sure that at least another 1000 American troops will be killed by then and over 7,500 more will be wounded. That is if the number of casualties remains at the level so far in this conflict. Since Bush's War in Iraq started in March of 2003, 1724 American troops have been killed, with 12,896 wounded. That averages out to 64 a month being killed and 477 a month wounded.

Now of course those numbers are just American troops. There are about 10 coalition troops killed each month and we have no idea of how many of those troops are wounded. We have no numbers for the tens of thousands of American mercenaries we employ in Iraq. Nobody knows how many Iraqis are being killed but it would be a safe bet, that if we stay at least until late in 2006, another 10,000+ Iraqis will be killed and more than that number wounded. I am talking about totally innocent people here. I have no idea of how many terrorists are being killed.

We have to ask ourselves if those numbers are worth what we are going to get out of keeping troops there that long. With the current Bush Administration plan to wait until the Iraqis are able to take care of themselves, we can plan on tens of thousands of Americans killed and wounded. Some say we could be there for several years to come before we start to draw down the number of troops we maintain there while others in Washington talk about permanent military bases being built, which means taking losses for.......well forever.

It is obvious that the White House and Congress believe that another ten thousand American casualties is OK with them. They must believe that the loss of that number of troops is acceptable or we would be pulling troops sooner.

Now we know that some troops are on their third tour of combat duty and I don't care how great our troops are, they can't keep this up and keep their families or their minds in one piece. Because of poor planning, this War in Iraq is destroying our military. Every month that goes by without enough recruits, means those serving now will have a heavier load to carry and they will, just as long as they can, but they will burn out.

George Bush's legacy might just be that he destroyed the greatest military ever assembled... ours.