After continually being slapped in the face with lie after “mistake” after lie, Americans across the board are generally ready to see us withdraw from Iraq. We are about to hit the fourth year of a war that was promised to be quick and beneficial to Americans and Iraqis alike. Yet it has not been quick, and it has benefited no one as far as I can see. Oh wait, I’m sorry. The oil companies and Halliburton have made out like bandits. I suppose we all thought beneficial meant to the Iraqi civilians and American citizens; regular citizens, not the wealthy elite, who make up about three percent of our population.

American soldiers were not greeted as liberators, and there was never ever any connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11th. Now that Saddam has been removed from power and executed, there is more violence raging in Iraq than ever before. Removing the royal army allowed every different sect in the area (there are several, and they all hate each other), to wage war for control over a now debacle of a country. Could anyone with half a mind to do some cultural research have seen this coming? I know, half a mind is generous to say but I won’t get into semantics.

Now the Senate can’t even get the votes it needs to even discuss a resolution in Iraq. On Monday, forty-seven Democrats and two Republicans voted to open a debate for a bipartisan resolution, while forty-five Republicans and one independent voted against. It left the Democrats (and apparently the only two smart Republicans in the Senate) eleven votes short of the sixty needed to begin the resolution debate. I know, I know, discussions will make us appear weak to the enemy. But up until now we’ve appeared dominating, unconstitutional, unethical, and dishonest, not to mention ethnocentric. So what’s one more negative quality at this point? At least the war could be over!

After watching the State of the Union address a few weeks ago, I truly couldn’t believe the gall of the president to ask Congress to send 20,000 more troops into Iraq. It takes some kind of rare audacity to suggest sending more troops, while refusing to give any kind of exit strategy or resolution because you tell us it will empower our enemies. Perhaps you could give us a resolution or something, a thought, a notion, a mere granule of half wittedness committed to ending our occupation of Iraq.

Maybe you are just going for lowest all time approval rating. You figure it’s really low anyways, why not go for some kind of record? Trying to go out with a bang, Mr. President? Well how about not taking thousands of young American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians with you? I realize the captain must go down with his ship, but the ship should not go down because of the captain.