Congressman Leonard Boswell says when Iraq’s prime minister appeared on Capitol Hill today (Wednesday), he failed to address key issues.
“He’s basically made a committment to fighting terrorism, and that’s good,” Boswell says. “However, it seems to me that with 250,000 Iraqis trained and equipped in the field — soldiers and police — they ought to step up and get those security forces taking over a lot of the responsibility that we’re doing so our troops can start some kind of withdrawal plan.”
Boswell says it’s fair to put more pressure on the Iraqis. “Most people that I have experience with when they got a little pressure, that’s when they perform the best because they know they’ve got to do it,” Boswell says.
There’s no need for a hard-and-fast timeline for withdrawal, according to Boswell, a Democrat from Des Moines who is a retired military officer. But Boswell says there should be what he calls a “methodical draw-down” of U.S. forces in Iraq because the insurgency in Iraq could easily degenerate into a civil war. “It’s getting pretty sticky right now,” Boswell says.
Iraqi’s prime minister has failed to directly condemn Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. “It kind of makes me wonder a little bit just where he is on that issue,” Boswell says. “He should speak out and he should denounce Hezbollah and do it the quicker the better. He should do it now.”
Despite railing against terrorism in the Middle East, Iraq’s prime minister did not mention the Hezbollah conflict during his speech this (Wednesday) morning to Congress.