Lynn C. Woolsey: “there are many truths about America's involvement in Iraq. My truth is that our policies there over the last 2 years…”

“there are many truths about America's involvement in Iraq. My truth is that our policies there over the last 2 years have been both immoral and ineffective. With nearly 1,500 American troops killed since the fighting began and another 11,000 injured, the time has come for a drastic change in our role in Iraq. Leave aside, if my colleagues possibly can, the fact that the President and his team misled us about weapons of mass destruction. Forget for a moment, if they can, that they invented out of whole cloth a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 tragedy. Those lives were bad enough. But their policies, the administration's policies, have also failed to achieve one of their later stated objectives of securing Iraq. The Bush administration is not only dishonest; I believe they are incompetent. Rather than liberating Iraq, the U.S. invasion and occupation has trapped the nation and its people in a cauldron of violent civil strife. Our presence there has not engendered gratitude but bred resentment in the form of vicious insurgency. It has emboldened Muslim extremists who hate America now more than ever. Neither Iraqis nor Americans nor anyone else in this world is safer because of this war in Iraq. In fact, a report came from the CIA's National Intelligence Council that concluded Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the most fertile breeding ground for terrorists.”