McGovern: Let's Walk out of Iraq

George McGovern, crushed when he ran for president in 1972, has some advice for Sen. John Kerry: Don't run out of Iraq - but do walk out of there.

Writing in today's New York Times, McGovern, like Kerry a decorated war hero, says he disagrees with Times correspondent Thomas L. Friedman's declaration "We will not run."

While it may be appealing to politicians, the problem with staying the course in Iraq, McGovern writes, is that "brave young Americans do the bleeding and dying — not the political leaders who committed them to a mistaken war."

"Terrorists are killing American soldiers in Iraq because our Army is in Iraq," he writes, neglecting to mention that the terrorists would be gathering in America, and killing American citizens in the U.S., were our soldiers not fighting them over there. But we digress.

McGovern cites a Maureen Dowd column in the Times in which she alleges that Ahmad Chalabi, whom he describes as "the convicted criminal Iraqi exile," tricked the administration's neoconservatives into believing that "the American Army could walk into Iraq unopposed and that he would be an ideal replacement for Saddam Hussein."

Quite a trick, since the fact is the U.S. Army did walk into Iraq - without the 4th ID, no less, our most heavily armored division - practically unopposed.

Replacing Saddam Hussein with Ahmad Chalabi, McGovern charged, "would be comparable to replacing Jack the Ripper with Al Capone."

"Thousands of young Americans bled and died in Vietnam to keep a series of political frauds in power in Saigon," McGovern charges, reviving his anti-Vietnam war rhetoric that helped Richard Nixon send him down to a humiliating defeat. "Let's not go down that road again," he urges, "claiming all the while, 'We will not run.' How about a compromise? Let's walk out of Iraq."

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Saddam Hussein/Iraq
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