Article

Thompson on the time to leave Iraq

Sunday, March 05, 2006

© The Santa Rosa Press Democrat

By Pete Golis, The Press Democrat
Sunday, March 5, 2006

Rep. Mike Thompson, the St. Helena Democrat, tells the story of a recent community meeting. Unhappy about Thompson's criticism of Bush administration policy in Iraq, a man in the audience rises to belittle what he calls the congressman's "supposed service in Vietnam."

It's at this moment that Thompson smiles and offers to take the man to a side room, where the congressman is willing to drop his pants and show the scars from his war injuries.

In a Vietnam jungle, Thompson was struck in both legs by shrapnel after the platoon scout in front of him stepped on a grenade. The scout was killed; Thompson suffered serious injuries and the permanent loss of hearing in one ear. Several surgeries were required to repair his shattered legs.

"Don't come here and try to 'swiftboat' me," Thompson tells the man, a reference to attempts in 2004 to discredit the Vietnam War record of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

It remains difficult for defenders of the president to deal with Thompson. He is a moderate Democrat not known for his extreme positions on anything. He served in the infantry in Vietnam. He worked as tractor mechanic before he went to college and began a career in public life. He has visited Iraq not once but twice.

And on Tuesday he introduced legislation that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by Sept. 30.

In addition, the measure seeks to improve Washington's flagging credibility in the Middle East by declaring that the U.S. has no interest in maintaining permanent military installations or controlling Iraq's oil resources.

"Today, the Iraqi insurgency is being fueled by the notion that we have become an occupying force in Iraq," Thompson said. "We need to send a clear message that we have no intention of staying in Iraq indefinitely."

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, who also represents the North Bay in Congress, is no less critical of the war in Iraq, but the Petaluma Democrat's opposition has never gained traction except among her closest admirers.

Perhaps people are sexist. Perhaps they pay less attention because she aligns herself with activists on the political margins.

For whatever reason, people find it easier to discount Woolsey as just another left-coast liberal reflexively rejecting all things military.

Thompson isn't like that. He has the scars to prove it.

About his legislation, the congressman told me he has "no illusions that the president is going to call and say, 'this is a great bill'."

But he says members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, are growing restive about the violent turmoil that has become the day-to-day reality of Iraq. As it happens, too, Republicans in Congress wouldn't be unhappy if the withdrawal began before they have to defend the president's policies in the fall elections.

By now, most Americans recognize President Bush's plans for the Middle East are coming unstuck. With Iraq close to civil war, the president's job approval rating has fallen to 34 percent, according to a new CBS News Poll.

"Remember a lot of folks warned this civil war could happen," Thompson said. "A lot of people have said we already are in a civil war. It just hasn't escalated until now."

Thompson reports that the differences between the Middle East in 2002 and now are startling.

Four years ago, he traveled back and forth between Iraq and Jordan. "I walked around Baghdad. I spent almost a day, and we went all over the place. I got input from Iraqi people."

"This time," he says about his January visit, "we went from secure military base to another secure military base to another secure military base. There was no interaction with Iraqi people."

His delegation stopped in neighboring Kuwait, presumably a friendly nation, but "even in Kuwait, military security people said it wasn't safe, we couldn't go out."

This is the same Kuwait that an American-led coalition liberated from Saddam Hussein's grasp 15 years ago in Operation Desert Storm.

At the time of Desert Storm, President George Bush, the current president's father, decided not to invade Iraq and now we know why. He feared that Iraq - a country in name only - would be splintered into violent factions in a civil war that could destabilize the region and cause long-term damage to American interests.

Before this war began, Secretary of State Colin Powell privately warned George W. Bush about the potential for sectarian violence.

And Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser for the first President Bush, went on television to warn that an invasion could turn the Middle East into a "cauldron and thus destroy the war on terrorism."

But Bush wasn't persuaded.

In his book on the countdown to war, Bob Woodward recounts that the Pentagon began making plans for war on the day after Powell made known his concerns. "That afternoon," Woodward adds, "the president left for his Crawford ranch for a nearly month-long vacation."

Woodward later talked to the president about his conversation with Powell: "... as I listened I glimpsed what Powell had apparently seen - uncertainty that the president fully grasped the potential consequences."

And now we see those consequences: Escalating violence between Shiites and Sunnis, the danger that instability in Iraq will embolden neighboring Iran, widespread hostility toward Americans, the risk that the Kurds' determination to create their own nation in the north will bring a military intervention from Turkey.

The president cannot say he wasn't warned.

President Bush may not like Mike Thompson's plan to transfer the responsibility for security in Iraq back to Iraqis. But he must understand that he is running out of time.

ONLINE VERSION OF THIS DOCUMENT AVAILABLE:
http://mikethompson.house.gov/newsroom/index.asp?ID=74