Open Letter to US Rep. Lois Capps (D Calif):

Considering your status as a “super delegate” to the Democratic Nominating Convention, and given your strong stand against our continued occupation of Iraq, I hope you will speak out stridently against the McCain-Bush-Petraeus strategy to keep the “surge” reinforcements in Iraq longer.
Maintaining current troop levels, i.e. NOT bringing the 30,000+ surge soldiers back as promised, damages American interests and uses up our soldiers. The US armed forces, especially the infantry and the armored battalions, need to regroup and heal themselves. We have to replace thousands of Humvees and many Apache gunships, etc. And asking our young warriors to go for third tours while the leadership has no overall reasonable goals in Iraq — this is wrong. This is criminally inept. The intolerable costs of this misguided mistake, almost $12 billion a month, bankrupt the nation. Our national economy may be our strongest defense.
We need to get out of Iraq and much of the Middle East (not Afghanistan), so I urge you, Mrs. Capps, to haggle with both the Obama and the Clinton campaigns to push them into harder anti-war stances. The stated goal of mostly withdrawn by Dec. 2009 is too far off — how about pledges to have 90% of American forces out of Iraq by August 2009, with the last 10% out by year’s end? Both Democratic candidates need to stop hedging about leaving “a few troops” within Iraq; please use your super delegate status to press our candidates to publicly call for withdrawal from Iraq NOW!