Our ticket out - Zarqawi's death, Haditha incident could lead to Iraq exit

White House officials have become lousy liars as of late (once you lie too often, you're easy to spot). They say these all important "war council" meetings President Bush II has called with his "war cabinet," a group of outside Iraqi and Middle East experts along with officials with the new Iraqi government over the next two days at Camp David will not talk at all about U.S. troop draw downs or withdrawals or even timetables for withdrawals.

Sure they won't. As if the politics of the situation can somehow be separated from the war itself and not even discussed. Bush II may not have a PhD, but even his rudimentary political knowledge realizes that any substantial withdrawals of U.S. troops will have political benefit at home before the November elections.

Anyone with any sense knows U.S. citizens are just plain tired of the war in Iraq. They've have virtually tuned it out and turned it off when it comes to war coverage on the television or the radio and have skipped the page in the newspaper or magazine. But every now and then the war has a way of grabbing your attention no matter how unwanted. Like for those residents of Pierce County, Wisconsin where I work as another soldier, this one a 29-year old female Naval Reservist killed by a roadside bomb last week and who leaves behind a nine-year old daughter, was killed in Iraq, the third such soldier from Pierce County to die. As one county resident put it on a local newscast (paraphrasing): "People around here are wondering what we are still doing there, whether our soldiers are dying needlessly in a place we don't need to be in."

Especially now since the Iraq's Al Qaeda franchise leaders Mohammed al-Zarqawi is now dead. The latest in a long line of U.S. boogeyman (although a legitimate one considering his barbarism) who we couldn't leave Iraq's fate to if we left, his fate was sealed when two 500-pound bombs were dropped right on top of him last week thanks to a tip from one of his own supporters. Seems even Al Qaeda couldn't stomach his bloody terrorism and that's saying something. Many in Iraq and the Middle East were no doubt pleased to see him die.

And so now that he is dead, the question remains what are U.S. troops still doing in Iraq? If Al Qaeda's Iraq franchise has been rendered leaderless when Zarqawi and some of his supporters were whacked, certainly the U.S. can legitimately claim a "mission accomplished" and begin the process of preparing the pullout of U.S. troops. After all, what are they supposed to do now? Solve the thousand year-old conflict between Shiite and Sunni? Guard soccer fields in the hot sun? Build more water purification plants? Keep the Kurds from declaring independence?

What is left of the U.S. ill-defined mission in Iraq can be handled by the Iraqis themselves or sorted out in any fashion at least. What's left of the U.S. mission is nothing more than pure nation building rather than chasing Al Qaeda terrorists. Again, something the Iraqis will have to tackle on their own eventually. The U.S. by itself alone fuels that nationalist portion of the insurgency, one that received plenty of gas in recent days over the Haditha incident where U.S. Marines allegedly massacred Iraqi unarmed men, women and children. How will keeping U.S. troops in Iraq solve that problem? And yet you still here the War Pigs talking about "retaking Baghdad" or increasing the number of U.S. troops to finally crush the insurgency. Its if though the ghosts of General Navarre and the battle for Algiers haunt the American Enterprise Institutue.

Certainly President Bush II will hear such fantasy talk during his Camp David meetings. Hopefully it will not obscure the opening the Zarqawi death and the Haditha incident provide as the U.S.' ticket out of Iraq. There is a consensus building both in the U.S. and Iraq to remove U.S. troops. What better time than to start the process now in the wake of the Zarqawi kill? So long as U.S. troops remain in Iraq there will be a nationalist insurgency that will kill U.S. soldiers and attack their bases and so long as the U.S. remains in Iraq the government will never gain any legitimacy among its people and will always be seen as U.S. puppet (at least from the Sunni point of view) because the strings pulled in Washington and U.S. bayonets are the frames holding it up. And for good measure, the fewer U.S. troops remaining the less the chance that another Haditha takes place or another checkpoint incident that kills an unfortunate driver. The longer the U.S. stays the worse it will be for the Iraqi government that eventually replace it for it will be so dependent on the U.S. direction and support that it will be lost without it and like South Vietnam, collapse of its inability to get by without the Yankees.

Our ticket out of Iraq is right on the table if we wish the take it. All it takes is for the President to rely on his gut instincts instead of his advisers and experts. If he uses it, he could begin to repair his presidency before it expires in January 2009. If not, then the war will pass on to his successor and his legacy with it.

--Sean Scallon