Time Table for Our Troops: Feingold Leading the Way!!!

If you missed Senator Russ Feingold on "Meet the Press" this past Sunday, (check out www.msnbc.com for the complete transcript), the following press release from Feingold's website tells of his wish for a time table to pull our troops out of Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to even consider this option, seeing it as a sign of failure. With the Iraqi Constitution falling apart and more of our soliders dying everyday, the cracks are beginning to show. Do we send more troops as most republicians (and even some prominent democrats suggest) or do we insist that our policy in Iraqi isn't working? When should our troops come home?


Marquette, WI -- U.S. Senator Russ Feingold today, at a local Listening Session in Marquette, Wisconsin, proposed a target timeframe for the completion of the military mission in Iraq and suggested December 31, 2006 as the target date for the completion of the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

In June, Feingold introduced a resolution calling for the President to clarify the military mission in Iraq, lay out a plan and timeframe for accomplishing that mission, and publicly articulate a plan for subsequent troop withdrawal. Because of the Administration's recent flurry of conflicting signals about the duration of U.S. troop deployments, Feingold said he feels obligated to help jump start that process by proposing a specific goal for bringing U.S. forces home from Iraq.

The former chief of Australia's armed forces, General Peter Cosgrove, recently argued that the foreign troop presence was fueling terrorist activity in Iraq, and called for foreign troops to be out of Iraq by the end of 2006. "Those remarks were constructive, and we need to be having this discussion here at home. I am putting a vision of when this ends on the table in the hope that we can get the focus back on our top priority and that is keeping America and the American people safe," Feingold said.

Feingold has argued that this kind of clarity, combined with an effective reconstruction effort.