Tom Hayden: A Call to Bring All Troops Home

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/25/2079/

A Call to Bring All Troops Home
by Tom Hayden

The Center for American Progress will call on Monday for the withdrawal of virtually all American troops from Iraq, for the first time–including US trainers in addition to combat forces.

The new approach places CAP, a think tank with Clinton links, in conflict with the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group and most of the Democratic establishment who have supported retaining thousands of American trainers in a lower-visibility war in Iraq.

The new analysis is driven by a recognition that the United States would be training Iraqi troops in a sectarian civil war with no end in sight.

The conclusions reinforce those voices urging that the United States end its involvement in a “dirty war” and instead enforce the 1997 Leahy amendment, which prohibits security assistance to any foreign forces “against whom exist credible allegations of gross violations of human rights.”

The CAP report should lead to Congressional hearings into whether the Iraqi government and security units are human rights violators, paving the way for a possible Congressional amendment to terminate US support.

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