Lawmakers Call On Bush to Announce Plan For US Withdrawal From Iraq: "A small number of Republicans have joined Democrats supporting a bipartisan resolution calling on the president to announce a plan for beginning the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.

Congressman Walter Jones, who broke with the House Republican leadership earlier this year on Iraq, recalls a statement in 1999 by George W. Bush when he was governor of Texas, urging then President Clinton to put forward a plan for withdrawing U.S. forces from Kosovo.

'That is all we are doing with this bipartisan resolution, Republican and Democrat. We are saying to the president, we are asking you to do the same thing that you asked President Clinton to do in 1999,' Mr. Jones says.

Supporters of the resolution have managed to gather backing from only about 60 House members, most of them Democrats.

However, they were joined at a Capitol Hill news conference by retired Lieutenant General William Odom, a former director of the National Security Agency.

He asserts that a continuing, long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq, with no specific timetable for withdrawal, prevents the United States from getting the support it will need from others to address broader security concerns:

'We need a broad coalition of Europeans and our allies in Asia to put things in order from the eastern Mediterranean to the eastern borders of Afghanistan,' Mr. Odom says. ' We need a lot of strong countries on our side. We cannot do that as long as we are in Iraq. The precondition for a serious and effective strategic engagement to stabilize this region requires withdrawal and admittance to others that we may have made an error.

Also at the news conference was Chris Prebble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the CATO Institute in Washington:

'For many Americans, as long as necessary has proved too long. Numerous polls now show waning public support for the war in Iraq,' he says. 'And I think it is important that the public senses a strategic reality. It is not in our interest to sustain an indefinite military presence in Iraq."

(Via GlobalSecurity.org.)