Bush Aides Leaning Toward Quick Exit From Iraq

["Gary Santos" <evs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bush Aides Leaning Toward Quick Exit From Iraq
http://www.cato.org/dispatch/04-21-03d.html#1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64457-2003Apr20.html?referrer
=email

"Confronting cost estimates of at least $20 billion a year and fears that
Iraq could become permanently dependent on a U.S. military presence, senior
officials in the White House and Pentagon are questioning the Bush
administration's most ambitious, long-term plans for Iraq's reconstruction,"
The Washington Post reports. "But the far larger task of ensuring that Iraq
emerges as a representative democracy friendly to U.S. interests and
operating with a free-market economy would be left to an Iraqi interim
authority, which could control key aspects of Iraqi governance within
months. "That could be much easier said than done, according to Director of
Foreign Policy Studies Christopher Preble in "A Democratic Iraq May Not Be
Friendly to U.S." Preble writes, "In short, if a democratic election,
reflecting the honest and freely expressed wishes of the Iraqi people,
produces a leader deemed insufficiently committed to Washington's goals, the
Bush administration will be forced to affirm or reject its alleged
attachment to the principle of democracy."