PRESS RELEASE
LaRouche Says Announcement of
U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq
Would Transform the Political Situation in the Gulf
August 3, 2007 (EIRNS)—The Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC)issued the following release today.
On Aug. 1, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a brief visit to Kuwait to review plans for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Kuwaiti officials, according to news reports on MSNBC, say they could handle the withdrawal of all 160,000 American troops in a matter of months; although an unnamed American general said that withdrawal plans have already been developed, that would require as much as two years to remove all the American combat forces, and the one million tons of military equipment in the country.
Informed of the Gates visit and the news reports of the withdrawal plan, Lyndon LaRouche concurred that any mass U.S. exit from Iraq would best be carried out through Kuwait. LaRouche noted that the U.S. has the ability to secure the withdrawal through the air cover capabilities now in the region, and strongly endorsed the idea of a U.S. announcement of formal plans to withdraw all the American forces—even if the time frame for the operation is 18-24 months:
Everyone in the region would breathe a sigh of relief at such an announcement. Nobody will want to see the conflict start up again, and I think that there is a good chance that such an announcement would see a cessation of the shooting to a large extent. Once the shooting stops, it will be very difficult to get it started again.
At the same time, LaRouche warned that the Cheney factor remains a threat. The Vice President is pushing an attack on Iran, and the greatest concern is a "Gulf of Tonkin II" incident, particularly during the month of August, giving Cheney the pretext for the attack. In Aug. 1964, the U.S. claimed that two American warships had been attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin, and the incident provoked the U.S. Congress to pass the Southeast Asia Resolution (better known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution), granting President Johnson the authority to provide military assistance to any country in the region, threatened by communism.
