Letter: U.S. has no strategy to win in war in Iraq

Thursday, April 19, 2007 | 6:55 a.m.

Richard McCord writes in his April 17 letter that the stakes in Iraq are extremely high and that we need to put everything we have into the fight. That being the case, why is it that no one - including the president and the vice president - has proposed a return to the draft?

If the stakes are really that high, then the president and the previous Republican-run Congress seem to have been dragging their feet for the past five years. Certainly, far more could have been put into this much sooner, and many advisers had been suggesting just that (and long before the current Congress took control). If we haven't put our all into it by this time, and we're still not doing so, then it isn't just the current Congress that should be chastised in this whole mess.

And if we are to stay and "finish" this, then I will ask - as so many others have - what are the exact, specific, observable, measurable behaviors and events that are supposed to occur so that we know we've "won" and our troops can now come home? That is hardly "giving away our strategy and position" to anyone.

Not a single person in favor of continuing this war (and who writes letters to this paper) has yet to answer that. Makes me wonder why not.

Timothy James, Las Vegas