BRING THE TROOPS HOME. NOW? SOMEBODY WOKE JOHN KERRY UP?

According to an Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times by John Kerry, it's time to bring our soldiers back from Iraq. "Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion. We want democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our valiant soldiers can't bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq's leaders are unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires. As our generals have said, the war cannot be won militarily. It must be won politically. No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences."

Kerry is suggesting that we give the elected Iraqi leaders a month-- 'til May 15-- to form a functioning government-- what he calls "an effective unity government"-- and that if they fail, we bid them luck and withdraw. And if they do succeed, he wants to get the withdrawal going by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, a broad coalition of progressive opposed to the occupation of Iraq, under the umbrella Win Without War, is pushing a congressional discharge petition in Congress so that a real debate of Bush's war and the alternative can begin. Headed up by former Maine Congressman Tom Andrews, the coalition includes the American Friends Service Committee, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, Center for International Policy, Citizens for Global Solutions, Conference of Major Superiors of Men, Council for a Livable World, Families USA, Feminist Majority, Fourth Freedom Forum, Global Exchange, Greenpeace, Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), MoveOn, NAACP, National Council of Churches, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, National Council of Churches, NETWORK A National Social Justice Lobby, Pax Christi USA, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), Rainbow/Push Coalition, Shalom Center, Sierra Club, Sojourners, Soulforce, The Tikkun Community, True Majority, 20/20 Vision, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, Us Foundation, USAction, Veterans for Peace, Women's Action for New Directions (WAND) and Working Assets.

How is a coalition like this going to get by Bush's rubber-stamp Congress, you wonder? Well, utterly freaked out over the evaporation of any support for Bush's war on the part of their constituents, some Republican rubber-stampers are getting nervous and having second thoughts. Today, according to John Byrne at Raw Story, 4 Republicans announced they are signing on to House Resolution 543, the discharge petition that would force the ultra-reactionary leadership, Boehner, Blunt, Pryce and Hastert, to allow a debate to move forward. The 4 Republicans who have come forward so far are Wayne Gilcrest (MD), Jim Leach (IA), Ron Paul (TX) and Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones (NC). As more and more Republican rubber-stampers see Bush's continued occupation of Iraq, coupled with his plummeting approval ratings-- as well as their own-- as a liability to their continued plush careers in Washington, momentum may gather for this and for proposals like Jack Murtha's and John Kerry's.


THURSDAY UPDATE: KERRY INTRODUCES RESOLUTION & IS IMMEDIATELY ATTACKED BY RIGHT-WING CRACKPOT WAYNE ALLARD

After Kerry introduced a resolution calling for serious deadlines in Iraq he left the floor of the Senate to attend a committee meeting. In a move typical of the cowardly, right-wing sleazeball Wayne Allard (R-CO), he took the opportunity to viciously attack Kerry in his absence claiming that "we're seeing an individual who's being spun in the political winds" and claiming the resolution, in true rubber-stamp Republican fashion, was "not anything that we should take very seriously."

Allard made the rubber-stamp statement of the day for his weak, dishonest and pathetic party: "We see Senator Kerry going and being spun in the political winds while the President remains strong, remains forceful. He truly is a leader in a very difficult situation in Iraq, and that's why I feel so very committed to supporting the President."

When Kerry returned he confronted the sniveling, treacherous little shit from Colorado. "When it comes to issues of war and peace and young Americans dying, nobody spins me. Period... Let me ask the Senator from Colorado: Is it okay that young Americans are dying right now while politicians in Baghdad are frittering away the time and squandering the opportunity that our soldiers fought to give them? Remember them," referring to the Bush Regime Allard has always acted as a complete rubber-stamp for, "telling us that U.S. soldiers were going to be received like conquering heroes with flowers all across Iraq? They told us it would cost $20 billion to $30 billion. Remember that, colleagues? No planning was put in place. What are we doing? Just drifting day after day after day... People have been able to make mistake after mistake after mistake, and people want to come to the Senate floor and defend it as somehow justifiable."