Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell, a Democrat, says he doesn’t know why President Bush is still threatening to veto the troop funding bills in the House and Senate that also call for troop withdrawal. Boswell says he doesn’t know where the president is coming from, because the bill funds the war effort and takes care of veteran’s health issues.
Boswell says the bill sets benchmarks for withdrawal that the president himself talked about in the State of the Union and he says "we think that’s reasonable." Boswell says if you throw out whether or not it was right to go to war in the first place, he sees clear phases of the operation the U.S. has completed in Iraq.
Boswell says the U.S. successfully liberated Iraq; former dictator Saddam Hussein was captured, tired and executed by the Iraqis; the Iraqis now have 300-thousand trained and equipped soldiers to take over, so Boswell says it’s time for Iraq to take responsibility. Boswell says the U.S. needs to send a message to the Iraqi leaders.
Boswell says the message is the Iraqis have the responsibility to take control of the protection of "whatever," the oil fields or something significant. Then Boswell says the U.S. will start pulling the troops out and give the Iraqis control over something else in a reasonable time later, so they Iraqis have to take responsibility. Boswell, who is from Des Moines, represents the third district.