Great editorial by Thomas Oliphant. [View All]

[Mass]

Not linked to Kerry, but it is great to see that Oliphant understand what Feingold's declaration was about. (I wonder if the end is a plea to a certain senator to be the one).

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/23/when_should_troops_return/

That is an oversimplification. Feingold is a notoriously precise speaker, and it's worth letting him make his own case.

A great many conflicting signals have been coming out of the military and the Bush administration about the war in recent weeks -- specifically the duration of our involvement and the size of our deployment over time.

In what he acknowledged was an effort to ''jump start" a national discussion, Feingold proposed setting a specific goal for bringing US forces home. His suggested date: the end of next year. Equally important is his call for a detailed road map to that moment. Feingold emphasizes that his suggested date should not be put in concrete, that there could be factors or events that make it sooner or even a bit later.

....

Already, officials are talking in terms of a military presence in Iraq of at least 100,000 troops for the next four years. Surely the United States can do better than that. The real meaning of Feingold's challenge is to see who will step forward to insist that we do better than that.