Former CIA Director Calls For Iraq Withdrawal

First, a digression. I was watching Jon Stewart the other night. His guest was General Colin Powell. Stewart skirted around some interesting questions, but Powell was too slick and Stewart was too deferential, and so obvious incongruities with the General’s story were not addressed. His basic line was, “we made the best decision we could with the best available intelligence.” Well, if they wanted better intelligence analysis, they could have asked any one of the millions of people who marched in the streets to stop the invasion. We know there was plenty of dissent in the “intelligence community,” and Colin Powell saying there wasn’t won’t ever change that. You know, if Powell and the other Bushist criminals really wanted to hear an alternative analysis of the intelligence, you know who they might have asked? Former CIA Dirctor John Deutch.

Former CIA Director John M. Deutch, institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said that the United States is not making progress toward key objectives in Iraq and called for American troops to pull out “as soon as possible” during a speech Tuesday (June 7) at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre.

Deutch, who delivered the Phi Beta Kappa oration at the honor society’s annual Literary Exercises, served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton from May 1995 until December 1996. In his 20-minute speech, he challenged the views of both Republicans and Democrats who say that the United States must stay the course to stabilize the country before disengaging.

That position, Deutch said, is based on the assumption that the United States will leave a stable nation behind. But it is also possible, he said, that the United States will fail in its Iraq objectives and lose international credibility by staying the course, even as its ability to deal with other crises, such as North Korea, Iran, and the fight against international terrorism, is compromised.

“I believe that we are not making progress on our key objectives in Iraq,” Deutch said. “There may be days when security seems somewhat improved and when the…

Posted by Gregoire
I was born in NYC, raised in Palo Alto CA, attended university at UC Santa Cruz. I spent the better part of a decade traveling in Asia and working in restaurants before entering graduate school in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at UVA in Charlottesville VA,...