Soldiers take on the new plan

When you take away all the politicians and all the nay-sayers and listen for a MOMENT to what those in the midst of this war are saying, would the opposers listen then? Probably not.

If you really think about it, the soldiers are the ones seeing first hand what's taking place, the difference that's being made, and also understand this could mean more sacrifice.

Troops sound off about Bush's new plan and as I suspected, and have read on various soldier blogs, they agree with this new plan. And frankly, so do I.

U.S. troops comment on Bush Iraq plan

"The commander said the plan was formulated in close coordination with forces on the ground.

"This new strategy comes from us, not Washington. The new defense secretary came here and sat down with one of my battalion commanders," he said. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited military and political leaders in Iraq in late December."

Hmm, it came from the troops?

"There's a new direction. It's because of the Samarra bombing last February - al-Qaida did that and set a new direction in motion," Wright said. "Now we need to readjust our track for this new dynamic."

But he said he feared that politics would derail the effort. Democrats have opposed the troop buildup and other critics have expressed skepticism that this plan will work, pointing out that similar efforts have failed in the past.

"What I'm afraid of is shortsightedness and impatience from folks at home. Six months from now, people could be saying, 'You had a new strategy and what have you done?' To stand up an Iraqi army, you can't do that in just three or four years."

Wright said the new strategy makes military sense.

"We've got to secure the area, clear them, secure them and then the Iraqis need to take over. That's certainly the key to our ticket home," he said.

But he stressed it was important for U.S. troops to stay until the job was done.

"I'd much rather do a third deployment here or stay 18 months on this one, than have my son come back and do this in 20 years," he said."

What I find to be disturbing in the last few lines though is the reservations of the soldier above. Our soldiers shouldn't be made to feel incompetent or apprehensive like this. And those who oppose this war seem to ignore that words that spew from their mouths come out very unsupportive and hateful to our soldiers. It's really too bad and a sad country when people verbally spit on those who would do whatever they could to keep this country safe.