From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Wed Apr 18 2007 - 17:08:21 EDT
Another guy I really hate is Richard Perle. Here's a clip from his most recent interview, a real no-brainer: Alexandria, Va.: You began this chat by saying that the occupation was a seminal error, and yet you insist we cannot leave Iraq honorably until the Iraqis are capable of governing themselves. Are these positions not contradictory? Had we withdrawn from Iraq as soon as practicable (presumably sometime in the summer of 2003) would Iraq not have descended into the same kind of chaos it currently suffers? Richard Perle: I think not but can't prove it. (When you make a film you can shoot the scene over, but not in real life). Seriously, the occupation as it once existed is over and ended with a very moving election in which Iraqis risked their lives to vote (in higher percentages than we do.) (...) Princeton, N.J.: You say we should have left Iraq right after Saddam's fall. Will you please explain to me who would have run the country and with what forces? Why would not Sunnis fight Shia, and Kurds fight Arabs and Turks? Richard Perle: I did not say we should have left but that we should have handled political authority to the Iraqis. We could have remained to assist them. Remember, there was no insurgency for four months. Could an imterim Iraqi government, made up of all social and confessional groups, acted to provent an insurgency? We will never know. But we do know what the occupation was not a brilliant success. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/06/DI2007040601624.html
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