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Key Points for the Fort Collins Iraq Withdrawal Resolution
The Iraq War is bad public policy: · The reasons given for the commencement of this war have proven false in all regards – Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, no link to 9-11, no ties to al-Quaida. · The United States military occupation of Iraq has placed significant strains on the capacity of the United States Armed Forces, both active duty and reserve and the National Guard. Our military has been so weakened that it isn’t in a position to fight another war. · Many members of the Armed Forces are entering into their third and fourth and even fifth deployments to Iraq. · The National Guard exists primarily to assist in situations of domestic strife and natural disasters and that ability is increasingly jeopardized by the guard’s involvement in Iraq, · The war in Iraq, now in its sixth year (longer than WWII or the US Civil War), has caused a) the deaths of more than 4,000 American soldiers and an estimated 1,000,000 Iraqis b) the physical and psychological wounding and disabling of at least 30,000 American soldiers and of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and c) over two million Iraqi have become refugees having to flee their homeland and d) the destruction of the homes, communities, and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as well as the often irreparable disruption of families here at home because of the sacrifice American military personnel have been called to make. · More than $510 billion dollars has been appropriated by Congress to fund military operations and reconstruction in Iraq when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), prior to commencement of military action in Iraq, estimated the costs of the conflict at $21 to $33 billion. We are now spending about $3 billion nationally every week, or about $1.4 million weekly from Fort Collins taxpayers. · The funds spent by Fort Collins’ taxpayers on the war and occupation in Iraq equal more than $207 million and could have provided enough money to have added 10% to the City of Fort Collins Operating Expenditures for each of the last four years, potentially adding significant percentages to police, transportation, and recreation budgets or for 31,151 children to utilize Head Start for one year; or more than 78,000 children to have a year's worth of health insurance; or provide 36,776 four-year college scholarships at public universities, or hire an additional 3,686 public school teachers, or build more than 1,099 affordable housing units according to the National Priorities Project. · The war and continued occupation have resulted in the devastation of Iraq's physical and social infrastructure and led to widespread and continuous resistance to U.S. occupation that threatens the lives of Iraqi civilians and the men and women who compose the ranks of U.S. and other occupying force. ·
The war has substantially been
"privatized," both in military contracting and in actual personnel on the
ground. There are estimated to be almost as many private security personnel
(mercenaries) in Iraq as there are US troops, except unlike troops they are not subject to US
governmental authority. · The “surge” has failed. Violence dropped temporarily, mostly due to a ceasefire by al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, but the point was to buy time for political reconciliation, which has not occurred and shows no sign of occurring. · The Bush Administration has it backward. They say “We will stand down as the Iraqis stand up.” Clearly, the Iraqi government will never “stand up” until we “stand down” and begin to withdraw. · In their recent testimony to Congress, US military and political leaders could offer no timetable for ending the war, no exit plan, nor even a definition of what “success” in Iraq would mean so we can bring our troops home. · It is now obvious President Bush’s “plan for victory” is to keep the war going until he leaves office so he can blame whatever happens on the next President.
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