Coble suggests pullout in Iraq
1-9-05
By Stan Swofford, Staff Writer
[Greensboro, North Carolina] News & Record

U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, dean of the state's congressional delegation and an avowedly strong supporter of President Bush, says it's time for the United States to consider withdrawing from war-ravaged Iraq.

Coble, a Republican from Greensboro, is one of the first members of Congress -- Republican or Democrat -- to say publicly that the United States should consider a pullout.

The 10-term congressman, head of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said he is "fed up with picking up the newspaper and reading that we've lost another five or 10 of our young men and women in Iraq."

Coble said he has noticed a shift among his constituents in the 6th Congressional District regarding their feelings about the war. Letters, phone calls and messages that had been overwhelmingly supportive of the war are now about even, his office said.

Coble, however, said most of his constituents still strongly support America's involvement in the war, as he does, and believe the United States invaded Iraq for the right reasons.

Nevertheless, Coble said a troop withdrawal should be an option if the Iraqi government is unable or unwilling to "shoulder more of the heavy lifting" for its own security.

There has been little or no indication that the Iraqi government can do that, he said.

"What we have are Iraqis killing Iraqis and American troops," Coble said. "All I'm saying is that a troop withdrawal ought to be an option. It ought to be placed on the table for consideration."

Coble said he is seriously considering raising the issue of a troop withdrawal with his subcommittee, although he acknowledged the panel might not be the forum for it.

"I'm going to keep talking about this," he said.

Coble said he is aware that few members of Congress have said openly that the country should consider withdrawing from Iraq.

Republican Rep. James A. Leach of Iowa may be the only other GOP congressman to call for a pullout, he said. Leach said on the House floor more than a year ago that the United States should complete a withdrawal that would be complete by the end of 2004.

Although many Democratic congressman have sharply criticized the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, as well as its conduct of the war, most say the United States must now stay until the Iraqi government is strong enough to defend itself.

Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, called for a U.S. troop withdrawal to be accomplished in 90 days.

Coble said he arrived at his position only after many months of searching in vain for evidence that the Bush administration had a post-invasion strategy to deal with the transition to Iraqi self-government. Insurgent violence against Iraqi security forces and Americans has increased as the Jan. 30 date for the country's national elections draws closer.

Coble, one of the most popular Republicans in North Carolina, has represented the 6th Congressional District, which touches counties from Alamance to Rowan, since 1984. He was interviewed last week not long after he learned that Iraqi insurgents had assassinated the governor of Baghdad and that five more Americans had been killed in combat.

Their deaths, and the deaths of other U.S. soldiers in Iraq, occurred a little more than a week after 18 Americans were killed and dozens were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded mess tent near Mosul in one of the deadliest attacks against Americans since the beginning of the war.

They were among the more than 1,200 Americans killed since U.S. forces first occupied Baghdad in May 2003, when Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq. The number includes at least 886 killed since U.S. forces captured former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Dec. 13, 2003. According to figures compiled by Coble's office, 31 military men and women from North Carolina had died in Iraq as of Dec. 11, and 279 had been wounded.

Coble was part of the overwhelming majority of the members of Congress who voted Oct. 12, 2002, to approve a war-powers resolution allowing Bush to attack Iraq if he decided it was necessary. Coble said he thought then that Bush was correct in attacking Iraq, and that he still believes it was the right decision.

"We've done a lot of good over there," Coble said, "and you don't read much about that in the mainstream media."

Mainly, the United States captured Saddam, "the international terrorist, the tyrant, the snake," he said.

But Coble voted to grant Bush the sweeping war-making powers believing that the administration had a "post-invasion strategy." Apparently, there was none, he said.

"If there was, I wish someone would tell me what it is or show it to me," he said. "I'd like to see it."

Coble said that if he had known there was no post-invasion strategy at the time of the vote on the war-powers resolution he would have "insisted that we keep our powder dry while we do some probing and planning."

Coble said he simply assumed that the administration had a post-invasion plan.

"There was never any question that we could whip their butt," he said. "The question was what were we going to do after that.

"Obviously, somebody was asleep at the planning table."

Coble noted last week that he was outspoken in his criticism of the Bush administration's post-invasion plan, or the lack of one, during his re-election campaign.

Coble, a former Coast Guard officer who saw duty in hostile waters during the Korean War, is known as an astute politician quick to respond to the moods and needs of his constituents.

He said he began to detect a shift among people in his district about the war as early as March. Mail that had expressed overwhelming support for the war was then running only slightly in favor. Coble's office said last week that the 700 letters, calls and messages about the war received this year have been split almost evenly for and against it.

Coble said he believes most people in his district feel as he does about the war in Iraq.

"They believe we were right to go there, and they strongly support our troops," he said, "but they are getting increasingly tired of our young men and women getting killed every day.

"We got rid of Saddam the snake. Now it's time to let the Iraqis take care of the snake pit."

On Meet the Press yesterday, Al Hunt said that the head of the Army National Guard has said that our only two options at this point are to retreat from Iraq or institute a draft, since they are having no success enlisting new people for either the Guard or the Reserves (which comprise 40% of all troops in Iraq right now).

It's time to take this issue seriously. Bush and Rumsfeld can say all they want that they don't want a draft and that it's not necessary, but this is their usual head-up-the-butt response. No, they may not want it, but they've got us in a position where we may need it. It just may be that the only thing to do now is get out. There is no way to "win" this war (whatever winning means--I mean, Saddam's gone, so now what?), so why spill more American (and Iraqi) blood? For what? The fight we're fighting now isn't part of the war on terror. It never was. I think it's time to examine this position of getting out of Iraq in a serious way, before we're left with no choice but to start up the draft again. Toward what end?

I'm curious to hear what others on this board think of the idea of pulling out of Iraq before the job is done, whatever that means. I know it'll lead to unrest and huge problems as the insurgents take over, and I suppose we have a responsibility there since we created this mess, but is pulling out, as Dennis Kucinich advocated, an option? How do you see this going if we don't pull out? What are the possibilities as you see them?

What job? Are there more people we need to kill? More chaos to create? More cities like Falluja to destroy? We are only causing the problems we think we are there to solve. Our very presence is the cause of the instability. We need to set a time table...say six months to train police and military and then PAY IRAQIS to repair what was damaged..not Halliburton. There needs to be a governmental stucture of course and they need to be the ones flexing their muscles but we don't have forever. In the end it is going to be a fundamentalist Islamic state that hates us..its time we came to terms with that and get the heck out. But we won't.....we are building fourteen permanent military bases there. We are going nowhere.