Republican Retreat From Iraq

As the tote board fills up with GOP diehards ready to pull out our troops, there should be satisfaction and relief for those who have opposed this insane war from the start. But there is only rage and disgust at what it has taken to get them there.

Sen. Pete Domenici now solemnly announces he has “carefully studied” the situation and decided to “support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."

He joins Hagel, Lugar, Warner, Voinovich, Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith and Lamar Alexander in defecting from the Bush fiasco. Others will follow.

Domenici has been in the Senate 34 years, but his safe seat will be tested next year not only because of his unfailing loyalty to a failed policy but the testimony of ousted U. S. Attorney David Iglesias that Domenici pressured him to speed up prosecution of Democrats before last year’s election.

So it is clear that Domenici’s decision to stop sending young men and women to be killed in Iraq is based, not on seeing them as human beings to be saved, but on his narrow self-interest. If public opinion hadn’t turned against the war, he would still be for it.

What kind of people make life-and-death decisions solely on what’s in it for them? If Domenici thought the war was justified last week, last month, last year, what else but fear of losing his cushy job has changed his mind? What has he “carefully studied?” Where has he been?

Disgust is too mild a word for the feelings roused by watching these weasels crawl toward doing what’s right in the hope of saving their own skins. But let’s get on with it and stop the bloodshed.